Re: thal moved to new location

[heer <heer at u dot washington dot edu>]

Khaled,

	You might want to take a look at the two keyboards Sakhr used to 
use for its old DOS Arabic programs (one for QWERTY and the other for 
AZERTY) and also the ASMO 663 keyboard.  You can find them in old Sakhr 
manuals.  All three keyboards put thal in a better position.  I've never 
understood why the IBM keyboard became the de facto standard for Arabic. 
Could it be because Microsoft adopted it? :)

Nicholas


On Mon, 25 Sep 2006, khaled hassounah wrote:

> The challange of the Thal was more complicated than I thought and we needed
> to change its location. This was an excellent opportunity to follow Amr's
> advice and remove the lam-alef combined letters (this I believe solves one
> of the known linux bugs)
>
> new layout: mediumware.net/olpc/keyboard-v4.xls (see page 15 for the layout)
>
> I would love to get feedback as I did some bold moves:
>
> 1. removed the lam-alef combined letters
> 2. Moved Thal and Shadda onto the B and T keys (shadda is next to other
> tashkeel letters)
> 3. Moved < > above Seen and Sheen, and moved \ | to where the english
> equivelant lives.
> 4. Moved the & and ^ to locations prevoiusly occupied by lam alef
> combinations.
>
> The major change is really the location of the Thal and Shadda.
>
> feedback appreciated.
>
> Khaled
>
> --
> Khaled Hassounah
> OLPC - http://laptop.org