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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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<img src="ar-lulua.svg" alt="لؤلؤة">
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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>
include(`corpus.html')
<p>
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 55% of all letters in the corpus.
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<figure id="letterfreq">
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<p>Arabic letter frequency distribution</p>
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<h2>Layout properties</h2>
<p>Below are statistics for the proposed layout.</p>
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<figure id="ar-lulua-heat">
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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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<img src="ar-malas-heat.svg">
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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 decision to put <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ي</bdo> in the top
row seems odd.
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Assigning the same left index finger to <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ا
ي و</bdo>, which are three of the most frequent letters, heavily
strains this particular finger.
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<img src="ar-osman-heat.svg">
include(`ar-osman-fingerhand.html')
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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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<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 the letters <bdo dir="ltr"
lang="ar">ل ب ر</bdo> are in suboptimal positions.
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Also it seems their algorithm favors the bottom row instead of the
easier to use top row.
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<img src="ar-phonetic-heat.svg">
include(`ar-phonetic-fingerhand.html')
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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.
</p>
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