On 9/23/06, Oibane <
pflm52td at w6 dot dion dot ne dot jp> wrote:Hi, Khaled.
1. On the difference from the usual Arabic keyboard.
a) dhal/shadda comes left to the 1 / ! key, as already Amr Gharbeia
has pointed out. (You say it's weird, but it's a letter key.
In Japan, it's Esc, though.)
The challenge really is with the location of the letter as opposed to
its status. For example <> are used much less than Thal. So I was
thinking that it might make sense to swap these two.
b) there is less / greater < > key, (greater is shifted) right to the
tah / double quote.
Noticed
c) There's no "bar" | key. It is found left to the z / hamza-on-yeh /
tilde, right to the left-shift. Your keyboard doesn't have it,
so a compromise is necessary, perhaps putting it right to the
tah / double quote.
I haven't seen a keyboard that has that letter! And I noticed that
lacking bar key on the Arabic layout, but if its put where you
suggested, it will have to replace the < > keys. Any other suggestions?
(I have never seen a real Arabic keyboard. I'm Japanese. Please
someone, correct me if necessary.)
2. On various keyboards around the world.
Forget about it. There're many many many keyboards. You can never satisfy
all. Just following the local custom is the easiest, and it's the
best, I think. If some way to customize thekeyboard layout is
provided, then it'll be great; it helps the situation, but again, you
can omit it, if you can't afford it.
I agree with you that we shouldn't satisfy all keyboard layouts. When I saw two common layouts I hoped that one had an ergonomic or other advantage over the other.
Khaled
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