1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
|
<!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">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/purecss@1.0.1/build/base-min.css" crossorigin="anonymous">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/purecss@1.0.1/build/grids-min.css" crossorigin="anonymous">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/purecss@1.0.1/build/grids-responsive-min.css" crossorigin="anonymous">
<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>
</div>
<script>
fetch('letterfreq.json')
.then(function(response) { return response.json(); })
.then(function(item) { Bokeh.embed.embed_item(item, 'letterfreq-div'); })
</script>
</body>
</html>
|
