RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-14 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:

 The question remains why you provide direct keyboard input for
 combining hamza  madda. Are there any letter combinations other than
 with alef/ya/waw that can be created via combination?

Yes. Heh.

 (I've seen accents added in handwriting for Pashto and even Dari!)

Well, I've seen a whole Dari book typeset with a Pashto typewriter and
then an additional slash added to each and every Gaf by hand.

roozbeh

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Re: [PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-14 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, C Bobroff wrote:

 For whatever they're worth, they're here as PDF files:
 
 http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

That only mentions there is only one Kurdish letter not already in 
Persian. But we know a lot of accent marks are used, while the above 
reference only mentions one of the cases in an extra note.

I won't consult it.

roozbeh

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Re: [PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-14 Thread Behdad Esfahbod
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

 On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:

  For comparison, European keyboards or the US-International keyboard also
  do not include standalone versions of all accents, and use many keys
  (accent keys and others) with a deadkey function to generate accented
  characters.

Remember that accents are different from HARAKATs.  An A  
character with caron is quite different from A, so when you
push backspace after the combination, you wish that the A with 
the caron is deleted.  But when you put a FATHE after a SHIN, 
they are two different characters, and SHIN is the same in both a 
single SHIN, and a SHIN with FATHE above.  When pushing 
backspace, you expect that the FATHE is deleted, but not the 
SHEEN...


 Just for the record, I oppose any deadkey mechanism for any Arabic
 script keyboard layout. The notion is rather complicated, and is only 
 familiar to the Europeans. Asian people are used to live keys instead, the 
 ones that appear after the letter.
 
 roozbeh

-- 
Behdad Esfahbod 24 Khordad 1382, 2003 Jun 14 
http://behdad.org/  [Finger for Geek Code]

In the corner of the dream was the man with the blue guitar
It had no strings but the music touched the stars


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RE: [PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-14 Thread Linguasoft
Remember that accents are different from HARAKATs.

We only discussed combining symbols (hamza  madda), not short vowels.

Peter


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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-14 Thread C Bobroff
 No, no Nastaliq font. It's not the default for Persian anymore. People
 have a hard time reading Nastaliq for anything longer than a few words.

OK, bye-bye Nastaliq for Persian.

But I mean Persian Naskh or Naskhi as opposed to Arabic Naskh. I wish
there were a precise term to differentiate the two. And I don't know what
my newbies are going to do when I tell them to type in MS Uighur or
Traffic for that modern Persian look! Crazy!

-Connie

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-13 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Behnam Esfahbod wrote:

 As Roozbeh suggested, we can put these 3 character in the new layout, but 
 my opinion is that we don't; because they SHOULD NOT use in persian texts, 
 and we have other local shapes for these characters.

No, we don't local shapes for these. These characters are usually used for
their *legal* value. We don't have that notion of Trade Mark or Registered
Trade Mark here, and there is also no need in Iranian law to put a
Copyright symbol anywhere.

Some certain publishers, like kaanoon-e parvaresh-e fekri, have invented 
a Copyright-like symbol and been using it some times, in the shape of an 
isolated Hah (he-ye jim-i) inside a circle. But again, it is not 
standardized, and it has no meaning in any legal circle.

(And if anyone is wondering if we need to have that character in Unicode,
the answer is no, we don't. The reason is left as an exercise to the 
reader!)

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-13 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, C Bobroff wrote:

 If you don't redefine your concept of easy,

Well, honestly the way it is now in MS software (or even Linux) is not
good enough even for experts. IMO, all OS-es should come automatically
with all languages enabled, or, at the minimum, come with an automatic
update the first time the user opens a document in, say, Chinese or
switches to a, say, Pashto keyboard layout.

 people are going to say it's too hard to bother with this script and
 that's why they advocate romanizing Persian.

I don't care if they can do that properly. If they suggest a sane
mechanism for latinizing Persian. The point is: nobody has ever come up
with a real suggestion, one that considers all the invovled details. They
usually just publish a table and stop there. I may even jump on the train
if they come up with a reference dictionary and a software to convert the
older documents.

 Do you know just to enable FA input on a Windows machine is asking too
 much for newbies?

It is. That is the reason the newbies should have these automatically
installed for them when they buy the machine. Or they should employ
someone to do that for them!!! The golden rule is: If you are a newbie,
know it, don't nag to others that you have a right to be ignorant, and ask
or pay for expert advice. That's what is already happening in the law
world, or the automechanic world, or ...

 I was even joking with someone at MS that a first-time user should be able
 to sit down at the comptuer and say, Please activate Persian and
 automatically FA will be enabled, Word will fire up, nastaliq font 
   ^
No, no Nastaliq font. It's not the default for Persian anymore. People 
have a hard time reading Nastaliq for anything longer than a few words.

 at reasonable fontsize selected and RTL/right-aligned mode on and
 on-screen keyboad at your service!

 Even this probably won't be sufficient...

It won't be. The system should start the Persian support at the first
moment the user starts talking Persian to the microphone.

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-13 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:

 These are *combining* Maddah, Hamza Above, and Hamza Below.
 Isn't that what I called deadkeys in another context? (Had no time to
 look into SC Unipad so far to see how exactly they function...)

There is a difference. Dead keys are typed before the base letter. These
are typed after the base letter.

 smart quotes: I see your point, but please see my point too. There are
 people editing bilingual technical manuals (like me) where certain types
 of quotes are mandatory, even for languages like Persian that normally
 prefer another type of quotes (guillemets).

I understand. You have special requirements. But unfortunately, I have no 
clue how to get this fixed.

 I may help you with information from ALA-LC (American Library
 Association/Library of Congress) containing exact lists of characters,
 alongside with standard transliterations, for all languages you are
 interested in.

Well, there are some problems here. We want, say, modern Baluchi script as 
written in Iran. LoC will probably provide us with every Arabic letters 
that has ever been used in any Baluchi. And they may even give us that by 
mistake.

Let me give you an example. There is a certain character in Unicode, a Hah
with two vertical dots over it, and it was mentioned as being a Pashto
letter. We found that it's not used in modern Pashto at all. Unicode
experts said that it comes from the librarians, so it should be used in
older orthographies. Next time we were in Kabul we contacted all the
experts, and found many older letters that were not in Unicode, but not a
single evidence of this certain letter. No expert had ever seen it. Guess
what? It was possibly a mistake by some librarian somewhere, or a letter
just a single author had used.

We don't want these in our set.

 I have no information about frequency, except that for Kurdish, I might
 be able to generate a frequency list from some electronic texts that I
 compile din the past. (There may be more recent webpages as well but I
 will have to look around.)

I won't trust web pages, since they had been done using the limited
technology. But we'd appreciate your Kurdish list.

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-13 Thread Linguasoft
There is a difference. Dead keys are typed before the base letter. 
These are typed after the base letter.
Correct. A Unicode wordprocessor package in the creation of which I
participated some 10 years ago called the latter variety accent
modifier keys (which isn't very clear either). The question remains why
you provide direct keyboard input for combining hamza  madda. Are
there any letter combinations other than with alef/ya/waw that can be
created via combination?

We want, say, modern Baluchi script as written in Iran. LoC will 
probably provide us with every Arabic letters that has ever been used
in any Baluchi.
I see your point. The best approach would probably be to ask a local
publisher who publishes newspapers or magazines in these languages. But
many of them may use patched fonts or simplications or other workarounds
(I've seen accents added in handwriting for Pashto and even Dari!), so
there is no guarantee of standard usage as well unless someone in your
country eventually comes up with an official standard and provides
workable technical solutions. As to Kurdish written in Arabic script,
there may be variations due to the same reason. For example, I have seen
texts where three dots are used in lieu of the caret-alike symbol that
seems to be the one used in standard Kurdish (and in prestigious
Kurdish dictionaries that I've consulted). My own experience comes
mainly from occasional typesetting for the local Kurdish community here
in C.Europe (among them, some well-known writers from Iraqi Kurdistan),
but I can by no means guarantee that the Kurdish they write is identical
with the Kurdish written in Iran...

Let me give you an example. There is a certain character in Unicode, a

Hah with two vertical dots over it, and it was mentioned as being a
Pashto letter. We found that it's not used in modern Pashto at all.
Unicode experts said that it comes from the librarians, so it should be
used in older orthographies. [...]
The same is true for traditional Urdu or Sindhi orthographies (e.g.,
letters with four dots), and I am sure you'll find the same phenomenon
in many other languages (just think of Traditional Chinese versus
Simplified Chinese which are now getting confused in Unicode so that the
borderline can no longer be clearly drawn). In other words, whether you
want these special characters for occasional use in a keyboard layout
is a question where you draw the borderline...

Best regards,
Peter

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Re: [PersianComputing] RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-13 Thread C Bobroff
  I may help you with information from ALA-LC (American Library
  Association/Library of Congress) containing exact lists of characters,
  alongside with standard transliterations, for all languages you are
  interested in.

For whatever they're worth, they're here as PDF files:

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html

-Connie

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Linguasoft
Dear Roozbeh,

Thanks for your efforts to provide us with an experimental version of
the new standard keyboard layout for Persian !

I tried the keyboard in Word2000/Win2000, using Arial Unicode MS which
displays all glyphs that can be generated via the keyboard except Riyal
sign and Subscript alef. I am not quite sure in which context standalone
versions of maddah, hamzah above and hamzah below are used, but assume
they are there because they are in the Unicode standard. Standard
shortcuts of Word for C, R, and T also work with the Persian keyboard.
What does not work is Word's AutoCorrect option for smart quotes, i.e.
neither quotation mark (U+0022) nor apostrophe (U+0027) are converted
into their smart equivalents; I wonder if this feature is
keyboard-(dll)-related but if it is, I suggest to implement it as well
as many users, especially in bilingual context, may want to use
typographically correct English quotation marks.

How would you input ZSNJ, and RTL/LTR markers with the new keyboard?
(These special characters aren't mentioned in keyboard.png as well.)

I also wonder whether there is any accepted standard to show alef
maqsura on keytops. In keyboard.png, you use an initial shape of ya
without dots which may be misleading; how about using isolated ya
without dots but with a superscript alef (I remember this was a keytop
inscription on a keyboard for an Arabic/Persian typesetting machine that
I use many years ago...)

Are there any decisions as to support other regional languages such as
Kurdish or Azeri? If the ultimate goal is to support several languages
using an extended Arabic glyphset via one and the same keyboard, my
feeling is that some Shift or Alt key positions may have better been
reserved for special characters of these languages, or defined as
deadkeys to create certain accented characters (as in case of the US
International keyboard).

Best regards,

Peter E. Hauer
Linguasoft
Vienna, Austria



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roozbeh
Pournader
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 2:56 PM
To: The FarsiWeb Mailing List; Persian Computing list
Subject: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows



Using Microsoft's new keyboard creation tool, we created a keyboard
layout based on the latest committee draft for the future national
Iranian keyboard layout. You can download it at:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/farsitools/persiankeyboard.zip?downlo
ad

Important Note: This only works for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and
Windows Server 2003.

More Important Note: Please provide feedback, if you have any. Otherwise
this may become a national standard and then suddenly you may start to
nag
;-)

Installation Instructions
=

1. Download the ZIP file, and unpack it.

2. Go to the directory where you have unpacked the ZIP file, and 
double-click the file called 'Persian.msi' (or right-click on it and 
choose 'Install'). Follow the instructions.

3. Go to the keyboard layouts section of your Control Panel, and choose
the Farsi layout to edit. In the small Windows that pops up, choose 
Farsi in the first dropdown dialog, and Persian experimental layout
in 
the second. Press OK a few times.

The new Persian layout should now replace the old MS layout.

Known bugs
==

1. Shift-Space doesn't work. You should use Shift+B for inserting Zero 
Width Non-Joiner.

2. This is a Windows feature: Ctrl+Shift will act like AltGr/right Alt.
If you have shortcut keys assigned to them, they may start to act in a
weird way.

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Linguasoft
Standard shortcuts of Word for C, R, and T refers to copyright,
registered, and trademark signs ...


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Linguasoft
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 4:25 PM
To: 'Roozbeh Pournader'; 'The FarsiWeb Mailing List'; 'Persian Computing
list'
Subject: RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows


Dear Roozbeh,

Thanks for your efforts to provide us with an experimental version of
the new standard keyboard layout for Persian !

I tried the keyboard in Word2000/Win2000, using Arial Unicode MS which
displays all glyphs that can be generated via the keyboard except Riyal
sign and Subscript alef. I am not quite sure in which context standalone
versions of maddah, hamzah above and hamzah below are used, but assume
they are there because they are in the Unicode standard. Standard
shortcuts of Word for C, R, and T also work with the Persian keyboard.
What does not work is Word's AutoCorrect option for smart quotes, i.e.
neither quotation mark (U+0022) nor apostrophe (U+0027) are converted
into their smart equivalents; I wonder if this feature is
keyboard-(dll)-related but if it is, I suggest to implement it as well
as many users, especially in bilingual context, may want to use
typographically correct English quotation marks.

How would you input ZSNJ, and RTL/LTR markers with the new keyboard?
(These special characters aren't mentioned in keyboard.png as well.)

I also wonder whether there is any accepted standard to show alef
maqsura on keytops. In keyboard.png, you use an initial shape of ya
without dots which may be misleading; how about using isolated ya
without dots but with a superscript alef (I remember this was a keytop
inscription on a keyboard for an Arabic/Persian typesetting machine that
I use many years ago...)

Are there any decisions as to support other regional languages such as
Kurdish or Azeri? If the ultimate goal is to support several languages
using an extended Arabic glyphset via one and the same keyboard, my
feeling is that some Shift or Alt key positions may have better been
reserved for special characters of these languages, or defined as
deadkeys to create certain accented characters (as in case of the US
International keyboard).

Best regards,

Peter E. Hauer
Linguasoft
Vienna, Austria



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Roozbeh
Pournader
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 2:56 PM
To: The FarsiWeb Mailing List; Persian Computing list
Subject: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows



Using Microsoft's new keyboard creation tool, we created a keyboard
layout based on the latest committee draft for the future national
Iranian keyboard layout. You can download it at:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/farsitools/persiankeyboard.zip?downlo
ad

Important Note: This only works for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and
Windows Server 2003.

More Important Note: Please provide feedback, if you have any. Otherwise
this may become a national standard and then suddenly you may start to
nag
;-)

Installation Instructions
=

1. Download the ZIP file, and unpack it.

2. Go to the directory where you have unpacked the ZIP file, and 
double-click the file called 'Persian.msi' (or right-click on it and 
choose 'Install'). Follow the instructions.

3. Go to the keyboard layouts section of your Control Panel, and choose
the Farsi layout to edit. In the small Windows that pops up, choose 
Farsi in the first dropdown dialog, and Persian experimental layout
in 
the second. Press OK a few times.

The new Persian layout should now replace the old MS layout.

Known bugs
==

1. Shift-Space doesn't work. You should use Shift+B for inserting Zero 
Width Non-Joiner.

2. This is a Windows feature: Ctrl+Shift will act like AltGr/right Alt.
If you have shortcut keys assigned to them, they may start to act in a
weird way.

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Re: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Behnam Esfahbod

Oops!

 2. This is a Windows feature: Ctrl+Shift will act like AltGr/right Alt. If
 you have shortcut keys assigned to them, they may start to act in a weird
 way.

The truth is Ctrl+Alt act as AltGr (right Alt).

-- 
Behnam Esfahbod ..[ http://esfahbod.info | behnam(a)esfahbod.info ]


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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread C Bobroff
  I am not quite sure in which context standalone
 versions of maddah, hamzah above and hamzah below are used, but assume
 they are there because they are in the Unicode standard.

In a textbook, you might want to say, This here is a maddah.  In the
past, I wanted to show what a superscript alif compared to fatha looks
like and was not able to

-Connie


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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:

 Thanks for your efforts to provide us with an experimental version of
 the new standard keyboard layout for Persian !

You're welcome Peter. But please don't propagate it much, since that may
be changed.

 I tried the keyboard in Word2000/Win2000, using Arial Unicode MS which
 displays all glyphs that can be generated via the keyboard except Riyal
 sign and Subscript alef.

Rial sign is Unicode 3.2. Subscript Alef is Unicode 4.0. Microsoft has not 
enough time to implement them for you.

 I am not quite sure in which context standalone versions of maddah,
 hamzah above and hamzah below are used, but assume they are there
 because they are in the Unicode standard.

They are not the standalone ones. These are *combining* Maddah, Hamza 
Above, and Hamza Below. But since these were only encoded in Unicode 3.0, 
and Windows/Office 2000 only handles pre-2.1 characters properly, they 
appear as standalones ones to you. Try the keyboard with SC Unipad, for 
example, and you'll see.

 Standard shortcuts of Word for C, R, and T also work with the Persian
 keyboard.

Interesting news. I didn't know about them at all.

 What does not work is Word's AutoCorrect option for smart quotes, i.e.
 neither quotation mark (U+0022) nor apostrophe (U+0027) are converted
 into their smart equivalents; I wonder if this feature is
 keyboard-(dll)-related but if it is, I suggest to implement it as well
 as many users, especially in bilingual context, may want to use
 typographically correct English quotation marks.

We have no clue how to fix that even if that is a desired effect. For me,
that would be undesired. The quotation mark and the apostrophe (and a few
others) were only added to help manual entry of rich text (like TeX, XML,
and HTML) in a text editor without having the need to switch the layout
very often.

 How would you input ZSNJ, and RTL/LTR markers with the new keyboard?
 (These special characters aren't mentioned in keyboard.png as well.)

What is ZSNJ? If you mean ZWNJ, it is Shift+B.

I also don't know what you mean by RTL and LTR markers. If you mean the
Bidirectional control characters, they are at AltGr+9,0,I,O,P,[,].

 I also wonder whether there is any accepted standard to show alef
 maqsura on keytops. In keyboard.png, you use an initial shape of ya
 without dots which may be misleading; how about using isolated ya
 without dots but with a superscript alef (I remember this was a keytop
 inscription on a keyboard for an Arabic/Persian typesetting machine that
 I use many years ago...)

In a Persian context, you should only use Alef Maksura (a.k.a the dotless 
Arabic Yeh) only in initial and medial form. This is required when one 
needs to type a few Koranic quotes.

An isolated Yeh without dots with a superscript Alef over it should be
typed using the Persian Yeh and then a superscript Alef (D, Shift-V).

 Are there any decisions as to support other regional languages such as
 Kurdish or Azeri?

The general attitude in the commitee is to support those languages if
enough information is provided. We need to know about the exact list of 
characters each need, and their estimated frequency/importance.

 If the ultimate goal is to support several languages using an extended
 Arabic glyphset via one and the same keyboard, my feeling is that some
 Shift or Alt key positions may have better been reserved for special
 characters of these languages, or defined as deadkeys to create certain
 accented characters (as in case of the US International keyboard).

We are not trying an extended Arabic set. But we'd love a layout that is
able to support all major minority languages of Iran, although optimized
for Persian. We may even try to create layouts optimized for them if we
can find the expertise.

But we are not interested in Pashto, Sindhi, or Urdu at all, while we are
very interested in Azeri, Kurdish, Baluchi, ...

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, C Bobroff wrote:

 In a textbook, you might want to say, This here is a maddah.  In the
 past, I wanted to show what a superscript alif compared to fatha looks
 like and was not able to

You should put them either over a space, or a Tatweel (U+0640, the base
line extender that looks like a '_').

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:

 No other keyboard I know for extended Arabic languages provides keytop
 positions for standalone versions of maddah, hamzah above and hamzah
 below, although it might make sense to use these keys as deadkeys to
 type compounded glyphs alef-madda, alef-hamza, waw-hamza, etc., in order
 to have keytop positions that are presently occupied by these compounds
 free for other characters or symbols.

That is a limitation of the software you are using. These are combining 
ones.

 For comparison, European keyboards or the US-International keyboard also
 do not include standalone versions of all accents, and use many keys
 (accent keys and others) with a deadkey function to generate accented
 characters.

Just for the record, I oppose any deadkey mechanism for any Arabic
script keyboard layout. The notion is rather complicated, and is only 
familiar to the Europeans. Asian people are used to live keys instead, the 
ones that appear after the letter.

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread C Bobroff
 You should put them either over a space, or a Tatweel (U+0640, the base
 line extender that looks like a '_').


Just over a space is fine but the font should be able to render it and the
fontmakers don't always know what all people may want to type.  If the
fontmakers see it's a character on the keyboard, they might make an
isolated form.  Then if the user can type anything and everything desired,
great stuff can be written in Persian and we can stop this jpeg/gif/latin
transliteration business! Best to make it as easy as possible to type
everything!

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Roozbeh Pournader
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, C Bobroff wrote:

 Just over a space is fine but the font should be able to render it and the
 fontmakers don't always know what all people may want to type.

That's some other matter.

 If the fontmakers see it's a character on the keyboard, they might make
 an isolated form.

There is no need for an isolated form. The rendering engine (the program 
that puts the glyphs in the font on the screen next to each other) is 
supposed to render that.

 Then if the user can type anything and everything desired, great stuff
 can be written in Persian and we can stop this jpeg/gif/latin
 transliteration business!

We are also trying to get there. Only the details in the path we choose
are a little different.

 Best to make it as easy as possible to type everything!

Depends on how you define easy. Try!

roozbeh

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread C Bobroff
 Depends on how you define easy. Try!

If you don't redefine your concept of easy, people are going to say it's
too hard to bother with this script and that's why they advocate
romanizing Persian.

Do you know just to enable FA input on a Windows machine is asking too
much for newbies? You should see the emails filled with anguish I get.
Your instructions are no good! The farsi editor isn't downloading, etc.
And these newbies are the same ones most apt to have great content worthy
of the technology too but they just get too frustrated at the
word-processing stage and give up.

I was even joking with someone at MS that a first-time user should be able
to sit down at the comptuer and say, Please activate Persian and
automatically FA will be enabled, Word will fire up, nastaliq font at
reasonable fontsize selected and RTL/right-aligned  mode on and on-screen
keyboad at your service!

Even this probably won't be sufficient...

-Connie

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Behnam Esfahbod
On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

 On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Linguasoft wrote:
 
  Standard shortcuts of Word for C, R, and T also work with the Persian
  keyboard.
 
 Interesting news. I didn't know about them at all.
 

Combining of C, R and T with AltGr (also Ctrl+Alt in windows) in new
keyboard layout is empty and so, MS Word SHOULD catch them for Copyright,
Reserved Trademark, and Trademark (that it does).

If we set any character at these keys, MS Word SHOULD NOT use them for 
any other character.


As Roozbeh suggested, we can put these 3 character in the new layout, but 
my opinion is that we don't; because they SHOULD NOT use in persian texts, 
and we have other local shapes for these characters.

-- 
Behnam Esfahbod ..[ http://esfahbod.info | behnam(a)esfahbod.info ]

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RE: [farsiweb] New keyboard layout for Windows

2003-06-12 Thread Linguasoft
These are *combining* Maddah, Hamza Above, and Hamza Below.
Isn't that what I called deadkeys in another context? (Had no time to
look into SC Unipad so far to see how exactly they function...)

smart quotes: I see your point, but please see my point too. There are
people editing bilingual technical manuals (like me) where certain types
of quotes are mandatory, even for languages like Persian that normally
prefer another type of quotes (guillemets).

ZWNJ  Bidirectional control characters: Thanks for correcting my wrong
terminology. I asked because these characters/codes weren't documented
in your graphic file.

The general attitude in the commitee is to support those languages if
enough information is provided. We need to know about the exact list of
characters each need, and their estimated frequency/importance.
I may help you with information from ALA-LC (American Library
Association/Library of Congress) containing exact lists of characters,
alongside with standard transliterations, for all languages you are
interested in. I have no information about frequency, except that for
Kurdish, I might be able to generate a frequency list from some
electronic texts that I compile din the past. (There may be more recent
webpages as well but I will have to look around.)

Best regards,
Peter

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