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<!--<h2 class="subtitle">لوحة مفاتيح العربية المريحة</h1>-->
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<h2 class="subtitle" lang="en">Ergonomic Arabic Keyboard Layout</h1>
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<p>This is work in progress and contributions are welcome. Head over to
<a href="https://github.com/PromyLOPh/lulua">GitHub</a> to see where
you can help.</a></p>
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<h2>Goals</h2>
<ul>
<li>Ergonomic typing of unvocalized and vocalized text with 10 fingers</li>
<li>Modern Standard Arabic and Quranic Arabic</li>
<li>Localized numbers (European/Arabic-Indic)</li>
<li>Usable as primary or secondary keyboard</li>
<li>Compose-based</li>
<li>Support for Markdown, RST, Wikitext and similar markup</li>
</ul>
<p>Other languages using the Arabic alphabet (regional dialects, Urdu,
Persian) are explicitly not supported.</p>
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<h2>Usage</h2>
<dl>
<dt>Linux</dt>
<dd>Run: <code>xmodmap <a href="ar-lulua.xmodmap">ar-lulua.xmodmap</a></code></dd>
</dl>
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<h1>Learn more</h1>
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<h2>الأبجدية العربية</h2>
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<h2>The Arabic Alphabet</h2>
<p>
There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet, plus quite a few extra
symbols required for proper text input, like the hamza in its different
shapes <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">أ إ آ ء ئ ؤ</bdo>, ta marbutah <bdo
dir="ltr" lang="ar">ة</bdo>, alif maqsurah <bdo dir="ltr"
lang="ar">ى</bdo> and various diacritics for vowelized texts.
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Since the usability of a keyboard layout depends on the text entered
it is necessary to study letter and letter combination frequencies first.
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The corpus used for the following analysis consists of
</p>
<ul>
<li>547,110 articles from
<a href="https://www.aljazeera.net/">aljazeera.net</a>, an
Arabic-language news site</li>
<li>149,901 articles from <a href="http://www.bbc.com/arabic">BBC
Arabic</a>, another Arabic-language news site</li>
<li><a href="https://dumps.wikimedia.org/arwiki/20190701/">a
dump</a> of the <a href="https://ar.wikipedia.org/">Arabic
Wikipedia</a> as of July 2019, extracted using
<a href="https://github.com/attardi/wikiextractor/tree/3162bb6c3c9ebd2d15be507aa11d6fa818a454ac">wikiextractor</a>
containing 857386 articles</li>
<li>and a plain-text copy of the Quran from <a
href="http://tanzil.net/docs/download">tanzil.net</a> using the
options Simple Enhanced and Text (for inclusion of diacritics)</li>
</ul>
<p>
summing up to roughly 1.5 billion characters.
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The plot below shows <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ا ل ي م و ن</bdo> can be
considered the most frequently used letters in the Arabic language.
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Together they account for more than 50% of all letters in the corpus.
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<p>Arabic letter frequency distribution</p>
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<h2>Related work</h2>
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<p>
Trying to unify existing layouts, the Arab Standardization and
Meterology Organization (ASMO), now part of
<a href="https://www.aidmo.org/">AIDMO</a>, published an Arabic
keyboard layout in 1987 as
<a href="https://www.aidmo.org/smcacc/ar/index.php?option=com_sobi2&Itemid=2&limitstart=2150">standard 663</a>.
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This, however, turned out to be a failure, due to lack of adoption by
the typewriter industry.
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<p>
Instead we’re currently using this layout (on Linux), which is
similar, but not quite the same.
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Most notably this layout arranges letters by their visual similarity.
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Thus it allocates suboptimal or even awkward positions to frequently
used letters like <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ا ل</bdo> and
<bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ذ</bdo>.
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<p>
The work by Malas et al. (2008),
<a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1bf8/74dcaa7f21c2cc3c6c5e526b61a9ee352bba.pdf">Toward Optimal Arabic Keyboard Layout Using Genetic Algorithm</a>,
presents an alternative layout generated by a genetic algorithm.
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They used a snapshot of the Arabic Wikipedia probably from around 2008 and
optimized for typing speed only, claiming 35% faster typing compared
to the <a href="#ar-linux">currently used layouts</a>.
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However the choice to put <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ي</bdo> in the top
row seems odd and suggests the authors did not take the time to review
the layout manually, given this letter is the third most frequent one
even in their own research.
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<p>
In 2015 patent
<a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US9041657B2/en">9,041,657 B2</a>
was filed in the US, presenting yet another computer-generated layout.
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Its genetic algorithm was seeded with just 54 Arabic e-books consisting
of 7 million characters in total.
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Overall it claims to be 9% faster than default layouts.
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This layout rips off most of the standard layout’s second layer,
but amusingly fails to include a question mark, while it does
provide <em>three</em> single-quote marks ’ and <em>two</em> Arabic
semicolon <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">؛</bdo>.
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Additionally it places <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ي</bdo> in an even
worse position than Malas’ layout.
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<img src="ar-khorshid.svg">
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<p>
In the paper
<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264837659_A_new_optimal_Arabic_keyboard_layout_using_genetic_algorithm">A new optimal Arabic keyboard layout using genetic algorithm</a>
Khorshid et al. present yet another
layout.
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They claim a 36% improvement over the standard keyboard based on
their criteria for ergonomic layouts.
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However in their layout from figure 8 both letters <bdo dir="ltr"
lang="ar">ب ر</bdo> are in suboptimal positions.
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<img src="ar-phonetic.svg">
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<p>
The <a href="http://arabic.omaralzabir.com/home">Arabic Phonetic Keyboard</a>
simply maps the QWERTY layout to Arabic letters, based on their sound.
Thus Q becomes <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ق</bdo>, Y becomes <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ي</bdo> and so on.
It claims to be optimized for writing vowelized texts, especially
Quranic Arabic, and thus includes quite a few combining characters and
special symbols.
Although it claims to make frequently used letters easily available –
based on the work of Intellaren – it makes no effort to arrange letters
according to their usage frequency.
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<p>
While technically speaking not a layout but alternative input
method, <a href="http://www.intellaren.com/intellark">Intellark</a> by
Intellaren is worth mentioning.
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It is based on repeatedly pressing the same button to modifiy the
current character.
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For example pressing A on the QWERTY keyboard cycles through the
alternatives <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ا أ إ آ</bdo> and <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ء</bdo>.
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Obviously this is slow, error-prone and violates Dvorak’s guidelines
for keyboard layout designs.
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