Arabic-L:GEN:Changing Arabic Keyboards on Mac OS X Responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 18 Nov 2005
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Changing Arabic Keyboards on Mac OS X Response
2) Subject:Changing Arabic Keyboards on Mac OS X Response

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1)
Date: 18 Nov 2005
From:Dil Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
Subject:Changing Arabic Keyboards on Mac OS X Response

It is a fairly straightforward thing to create a new keyboard layout  
for Mac OS X.  Once it is created, you simply put it in the Keyboard  
Layout folder of the Library folder, then log in and log out, and it  
is available as one of the input keyboards on the international pane  
of system preferences.  I have created several alternative Arabic  
keyboards for a variety of purposes.  Depending how 'techie' you are,  
you could 1) either go to:

http://wordherd.com/keyboards/

which shows you how to design a keyboard yourself, and then creates  
the required xml file for you; or 2) at the same site you could  
create the xml file of a normal keyboard, and in examining the  
resulting file figure out what you need to replace to get your  
keyboard in the right order; or 3) go to:

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ukelele

and download the freeware program Ukelele.  This is a GUI utility  
that lets you start with any already available keyboard (say the  
Arabic one) and then use the character pallette to drag and drop the  
characters you want into their proper places.  It is very easy to  
use, and if you are careful, you can have the keyboard of your  
dreams.  Once the file is created and you have placed it in the  
Library/Keyboard Layouts folder (and have logged in and out), go to  
the international pane, choose Input Menu, find the keyboard you just  
created, and select it.  It will then be available under the American  
Flag menu, and you can easily switch to it using command-spacebar.

I created a 'transliteration' keyboard with this method that allows  
me to type Arabic more or less like I type English, thus saving  
myself the trouble of having to learn an Arabic keyboard at all.


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2)
Date: 18 Nov 2005
From:madhany at gmail.com
Subject:Changing Arabic Keyboards on Mac OS X Response

When it comes to universal transliteration keyboards for both the Mac
and Window operating systems, the Alt-Latin keyboard, built by Kino
(http://quinon.com/), works extremely well for entering all diacritics
and odd characters.  Olaf Nelson, a doctoral student at the University
of Chicago and a researcher at the online Encyclopedia of Mamluk
Studies, has written up installation instructions and created diagrams
to show where the transliteration symbols are mapped on the keyboard.
The benefits of this keyboard are that it works in any Unicode-aware
program and that it works across both Windows and Mac operating system
platforms.  See:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/encyclopedia/index.html and
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/encyclopedia/alt-latin.html.

Maybe something similar has been built for the Arabic script?

-anm

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End of Arabic-L:  18 Nov 2005