Re: Arabic Keyboard layout

[Jim Gettys <jg at laptop dot org>]

Note the following please as this discussion occurs:

What matters here is that the right glyphs get put on the keycaps in a
sensible layout.  I'm glad you noticed the difference, but if the glyph
was quite similar, it would not have caused great trouble.  Arguing
about something that seems analogous to Han unification controversy of
the far east doesn't matter at the labeling of the keys, if the glyph
appears the same.  We're talking the shape of ink here, not characters.
Worry about whether we have the right glyphs in decent locations on the
keys. The actual binding to scan code to keycode to keysym to unicode is
up the keyboard software where it can easily be changed, and not part of
the keyboard itself. 

Our target audience are children and their teachers.  Most of the
children (particularly of the young age kids that the machine is to
serve) will not have the "use multiple keyboards" problem. Their
teachers are much more likely to have this problem, so going completely
off the beaten path probably isn't a good idea.

While similarity to widely used keyboards is worthwhile (so the teachers
don't go nuts), there are a number of items we are clearly changing: in
particular the location of "control", which is in a very bad location
ergonomically on most keyboards (RSI is a serious problem in the
developed world), and getting rid of caps-lock, which is just a way for
a child to learn to hate computers by hitting it accidentally.
                                   Regards,
                                              - Jim

On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 22:18 +0900, Oibane wrote:
> Kahled, please correct:
> in your excel table
> http://mediumware.net/olpc/keyboard-v2-arabic.xls
> to the "e" key is erroneously bound U+067D. It's not used in Arabic,
> although the appearance is quite similar. 
> It has to be U+062B Theh.
> 
> The pdf document
> http://mediumware.net/olpc/arabic-keyboard.pdf
> is correct.
> 
> Good luck,
> "Oibane"
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-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child