Re: Arabic Keyboard layout

["Amr Gharbeia" <amr dot gharbeia at gmail dot com>]

On 22/09/06, Khaled Hassounah <khaled at laptop dot org> wrote:
> Amr Gharbeia wrote:
> > This is the most common layout, albeit being inefficient (space wasted
> > with the four LamAlif combinations: ﻻ، ﻵ، ﻷ، ﻹ is just one example).
> > Alt Gr is not needed in this Arabic layout. I would love if we have a
> > project for a more efficient keyboard, but I have not heard of any.
> >
> We could also remove the ﻻ، ﻵ، ﻷ، ﻹ combination letters without thinking
> twice about it, especially that  an argument I heard is that they are
> not used often. But why is it wasted space? what would you put in their
> place? paint is really cheap, and that's the only thing I see us saving :)
Not only are they less used, but they also have different Unicode
values than ل and ا put together, which causes more confusion. ذ could
get a better location if they are gone, and also a number of other
letters that come in handy at times, especially in a number of Arab
countries (چ and گ are two such examples. There are other Unicode
letters (such as Inhibit Arabic from Shaping, that also can be useful,
when it is available for use).

These are small improvements that I, for one, find necessary. There
is, however, the huge job of a totally new layout which depends on a
real study of letter frequencies. It could be as innovative as
anything: for example, move the Harakat to the sides of the keyboard,
so they combine with the alphabet letters, just like we use Shift with
the Roman Script.