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<!doctype html>
<html lang="ar">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <title>لؤلؤة</title>
  <!--<meta name="description" content="">-->
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

	<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=IBM+Plex+Mono|IBM+Plex+Sans:100,400&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
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	<script src="https://cdn.pydata.org/bokeh/release/bokeh-1.3.4.min.js"></script>
	<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>

<div class="title-card pure-g">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-lg-1-3">
	<div class="lbox">
		<h1 class="title"><img class="logo" src="lulua-logo.svg"></h1>
		<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
			<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-sm-1-2">
				<!--<h2 class="subtitle">لوحة مفاتيح العربية المريحة</h1>-->
			</div>
			<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-sm-1-2">
				<h2 class="subtitle" lang="en">Ergonomic Arabic Keyboard Layout</h1>
			</div>
		</div>
	</div>
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-lg-2-3">
	<div class="lbox">
		<div class="layout">
			<img src="ar-lulua.svg" alt="لؤلؤة">
		</div>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<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>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<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>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<h2>Usage</h2>
		<dl>
			<dt>Linux</dt>
			<dd>Run: <code>xmodmap <a href="ar-lulua.xmodmap">ar-lulua.xmodmap</a></code></dd>
		</dl>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<div class="indepth-card">
<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<h1>Learn more</h1>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>
</div>

<section>
<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	<div class="lbox">
		<h2>الأبجدية العربية</h2>
	</div>
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<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.
		<!-- -->
		Since the usability of a keyboard layout depends on the text entered
		it is necessary to study letter and letter combination frequencies first.
		<!-- -->
		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.
		<!-- -->
		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.
		<!-- -->
		Together they account for more than 50% of all letters in the corpus.
		</p>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<figure id="letterfreq">
<div class="lbox" lang="en">
	<div id="letterfreq-div"></div>
</div>
<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<p>Arabic letter frequency distribution</p>
	</div>
	</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</section>

<section>
<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<h2>Layout properties</h2>

		<p>Below are statistics for the proposed layout.</p>
	</div>
	</div>
</div>

<figure id="ar-lulua-heat">
<div class="lbox" lang="en">
	<img src="ar-lulua-heat.svg">
</div>
<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
	</div>
	<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
	<div class="lbox">
		<p>Button heatmap</p>
	</div>
	</div>
</figcaption>
</figure>
</section>

<section class="layoutgallery">
	<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<h2>Related work</h2>
		</div>
		</div>
	</div>

	<figure id="ar-asmo663">
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-asmo663-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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>.
			<!-- -->
			This, however, turned out to be a failure, due to lack of adoption by
			the typewriter industry.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<figure id="ar-linux">
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-linux-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<p>
			Instead we’re currently using this layout (on Linux), which is
			similar, but not quite the same.
			<!-- -->
			Most notably this layout arranges letters by their visual similarity.
			<!-- -->
			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>.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<figure id="ar-malas">
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-malas-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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.
			<!-- -->
			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>.
			<!-- -->
			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.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<figure id="ar-osman">
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-osman-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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.
			<!-- -->
			Its genetic algorithm was seeded with just 54 Arabic e-books consisting
			of 7 million characters in total.
			<!-- -->
			Overall it claims to be 9% faster than default layouts.
			<!-- -->
			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>.
			<!-- -->
			Additionally it places <bdo dir="ltr" lang="ar">ي</bdo> in an even
			worse position than Malas’ layout.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<figure>
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-khorshid-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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.
			<!-- -->
			They claim a 36% improvement over the standard keyboard based on
			their criteria for ergonomic layouts.
			<!-- -->
			However in their layout from figure 8 both letters <bdo dir="ltr"
			lang="ar">ب ر</bdo> are in suboptimal positions.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<figure>
	<div class="lbox">
		<img src="ar-phonetic-heat.svg">
	</div>
	<figcaption class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</figcaption>
	</figure>

	<div class="pure-g flexreverse">
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2">
		</div>
		<div class="pure-u-1 pure-u-md-1-2" lang="en">
		<div class="lbox">
			<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.
			<!-- -->
			It is based on repeatedly pressing the same button to modifiy the
			current character.
			<!-- -->
			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>.
			<!-- -->
			Obviously this is slow, error-prone and violates Dvorak’s guidelines
			for keyboard layout designs.
			</p>
		</div>
		</div>
	</div>
</section>



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