Difference between revisions of "Central Kurdish/Keyboard"

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[[Category: Central Kurdish]] [[Category: Keyboard layouts]]
 
[[Category: Central Kurdish]] [[Category: Keyboard layouts]]
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The Persian-based orthography for Sorani Kurdish has 33 letters. It has most of these in common with both Farsi and Arabic scripts, which are two dominant languages in most regions where Sorani is spoken. There are an additional 14 letters in Arabic that do not exist in the Sorani script; adding these letters gives us a Sorani keyboard that can double up as an Arabic one (or even a Farsi one!).
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The Persian-based orthography for Sorani has 33 letters. It has most of these in common with Farsi and Arabic scripts, which are two dominant languages in most regions where Sorani is spoken. There are an additional 14 letters in Arabic that do not exist in the Sorani script; adding these letters gives us a Sorani keyboard that can double up as an Arabic one (as well as a Farsi one).
  
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A 47-letter keyboard seems daunting. The good news is that neither Sorani nor Arabic orthographies have uppercase and lowercase, so just using shift we can type 52 letters. Second, the additional Arabic letters look similar to corresponding Sorani letters, so in terms of user experience it will be more or less intuitive where each additional letter goes.
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A 47-letter keyboard seems daunting. The good news is: neither Sorani nor Arabic orthographies have uppercase forms, so just using shift we can type 52 letters. Second, the additional Arabic letters look similar to corresponding Sorani letters, so in terms of user experience it will be intuitive where each additional letter goes.
  
 
Because of these two points, most currently-existing layouts developed for Sorani also contain the remaining Arabic letters. Having a keyboard that can function well for both Sorani and Arabic is incredibly useful in Iraqi Kurdistan given the overlap between the two language communities. These layouts are not without their problems, though, so for this lab I will try to develop a better version of an ''Arabo-Sorani'' keyboard. More ambitiously, I will try to take this a step further and see if it is possible to implement a usable ''Farso-Arabo-Sorani'' keyboard.
 
Because of these two points, most currently-existing layouts developed for Sorani also contain the remaining Arabic letters. Having a keyboard that can function well for both Sorani and Arabic is incredibly useful in Iraqi Kurdistan given the overlap between the two language communities. These layouts are not without their problems, though, so for this lab I will try to develop a better version of an ''Arabo-Sorani'' keyboard. More ambitiously, I will try to take this a step further and see if it is possible to implement a usable ''Farso-Arabo-Sorani'' keyboard.
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== Existing Resources ==
 
== Existing Resources ==
  
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There seem to be enough resources for Sorani Kurdish that designs have somewhat converged to employing the QWERTY phonetic layout and adding in a flurry of non-Kurdish Arabic letters. However, they all come with their subtle differences:
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Sorani layout designs have somewhat converged to employing the QWERTY phonetic layout and adding in a flurry of non-Kurdish Arabic letters. However, they all come with subtle differences:
  
 
* Though all use Shift + another key for diacritic letters, the mapping of these letters varies, and some employ other ways alongside Shift to type diacritic letters.
 
* Though all use Shift + another key for diacritic letters, the mapping of these letters varies, and some employ other ways alongside Shift to type diacritic letters.

Revision as of 16:01, 27 February 2021

The Persian-based orthography for Sorani has 33 letters. It has most of these in common with Farsi and Arabic scripts, which are two dominant languages in most regions where Sorani is spoken. There are an additional 14 letters in Arabic that do not exist in the Sorani script; adding these letters gives us a Sorani keyboard that can double up as an Arabic one (as well as a Farsi one).

A 47-letter keyboard seems daunting. The good news is: neither Sorani nor Arabic orthographies have uppercase forms, so just using shift we can type 52 letters. Second, the additional Arabic letters look similar to corresponding Sorani letters, so in terms of user experience it will be intuitive where each additional letter goes.

Because of these two points, most currently-existing layouts developed for Sorani also contain the remaining Arabic letters. Having a keyboard that can function well for both Sorani and Arabic is incredibly useful in Iraqi Kurdistan given the overlap between the two language communities. These layouts are not without their problems, though, so for this lab I will try to develop a better version of an Arabo-Sorani keyboard. More ambitiously, I will try to take this a step further and see if it is possible to implement a usable Farso-Arabo-Sorani keyboard.

Existing Resources

Sorani layout designs have somewhat converged to employing the QWERTY phonetic layout and adding in a flurry of non-Kurdish Arabic letters. However, they all come with subtle differences:

  • Though all use Shift + another key for diacritic letters, the mapping of these letters varies, and some employ other ways alongside Shift to type diacritic letters.
  • Some keyboards use parentheses that I call flipped, i.e. when you press the key on the right, instead of getting a bracket that opens to the left, you get one opening to the right.
  • Different layouts have different quotation marks: while most have the Latin "" marks, a few do not have the French « » symbols (Guillemets) or have them as secondary to the Latin ones (accessible via AltGR, for instance), even though the Kurdish (and Farsi) scripts primarily use them.

Below is a list of Kurdish keyboards and where they stand in terms of the 3 key variances:

Layout Name OS Based on Bilingual? Diacritic Letters {} [] <> Quotation Marks Other Notes
Branah Online QWERTY Yes Shift + key Flipped Latin only Characters aesthetically look more Kurdish; the letter for 'h' is displayed as هـ while maintaining the functionality of the Arabic ه. Interesting idea to pursue (changing markup of a couple letters without changing output), though not sure how to implement it in Ukelele.
٣+١ كیبۆرد iOS QWERTY Yes Shift + key Not flipped French & Latin For the few keys that do not have an alternate Shift option, Shift + key gives the key itself (so Shift + 'ه' would give 'ه' instead of nothing). This seems more user-friendly; if they press a desired letter while accidentally having Shift down, it won't print nothing.
Lexilogos Online QWERTY? No ڵ ڕ are "rr" "ll," غ is 'G'+apostrophe. Shift is employed more sparingly Flipped Latin only Shift+key confusingly prints Latin letters half the time. Use of apostrophe and other combined diacritics might make it more intuitive to someone used to the Latin script for Sorani.
MacOS ckb MacOS QWERTY No Shift+key for normal letter Not flipped Latin & French Designed purely for Sorani. Upside is letter placement is more intuitive, but I cannot base mine on this because I want a multilingual design.
Unified Keyboard Unknown Arabic Yes Shift+key Not flipped Latin only Better for someone who already knows how to type in Arabic. Article is also a useful resource that helped me in keyboard design.
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