promyloph / lulua

لُؤْلُؤَة هي لوحة مفاتيح

لؤلؤة

Ergonomic Arabic Keyboard layout. See website for details.

Creating layouts

Although optimized for the Arabic language it should be possible to create layouts for other (non-RTL) languages as well. Here’s how to proceed: First, create a data file my-layout.yaml that contains all key to character mappings the new layout should have. Look at lulua/data/layouts for examples. Then create statistics for your corpus. For plain-text files use:

cat corpus.txt \
    | lulua-write my-layout.yaml file text \
    | lulua-analyze combine \
    > stats.pickle

Now you can optimize your layout using:

lulua-optimize -n 30000 --triad-limit=30000 -r -l my-layout.yaml \
    < stats.pickle \
    > evolved.yaml

To get a pretty picture (SVG) of your layout render it:

lulua-render -l evolved.yaml svg evolved.svg

It is highly recommended to use PyPy 3 instead of CPython and a powerful machine with lots of RAM (at least 16 GB).

Building documentation

This essentially means building the website and reproducing my results. You’ll need to obtain the corpora from me, which are not public due to copyright issues. Also the following software is required:

• Python/PyPy 3
• Ninja (for the build process)
• GNU autotools and a host C compiler (for 3rdparty/osmctools)
• GNU bash and zip (for makezip.sh)
• librsvg (rsvg-convert is used to create PDF’s from SVG images)
• MinGW (to compile the Windows keyboard driver)

Then simply run

./gen.sh > build.ninja && ninja

to run the analysis and create pretty pictures as well as statistics in _build/report.

Acknowledgements

This software is using an extended version of carpalx by Martin Krzywinski for optimizing layouts.

lulua's Issues

Windows physical key layout

Windows seems to think lulua uses a different physical key layout:

Arabic (102) displays correctly, so there must be an undocumented(?) switch somewhere:

Scientific evaluation

After all what we and the algorithms think could be a good layout may be total nonsense in people’s daily life.

Ideally we’d want to have a number of people learning the new layout while monitoring their progress in terms of hard numbers (typing speed, accuracy, …) and soft indicators (ease of use, comfort, …). A good setup would also include a control group learning the “standard” layout with the same typing tutor under the same conditions. Evaluating the impact of the compose-based Alef-Hamza approach would be very important, since people will feel weird about it at first.

The main challenge here is finding enough participants willing to screw up their typing habits for us (by learning a new layout) without providing any kind incentive. (There is no budget to pay them.)

Typing tutor support

Support klavaro typing tutor. Needs layout export and a few example texts.

Explain design decisions

• Why compose-based?
  • pro: consider hamza optional diacritic, backed by Buckwalter https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6046-5_3 (section 3.3)
  • con: could reduce weight of plain alif → more even distribution
  • con: more keys pressed, more combinations
• Why no العامية/dialect?
  • Lack of corpora, but we could scrape social media in the future
• Why European keyboard, not ANSI?
  • Arabic Mac keyboard is uses 102 button layout
  • Better support for 3rd layer (right shift key)
  • But both variants exist for traditional Arabic layout

Cross-compile Windows driver

Figure out a way to cross-compile the Windows driver, so we don’t need a Windows VM and the build flow can be fully automated.

40% keyboard

Have you tried implementing this layout on 40% keyboard? I find this project to be quiet interesting

Rearrange 2nd and 3rd layer

These were automatically generated by lulua-optimize, but are impossible to remember right now.

Translate website/documentation to Arabic

Since our audience is the Arabic-speaking/-writing population this would be quite nice.

Platform support

• Windows
• Android
• macOS: keylayout files have no support for custom modifier keys. State machine is only useful for deadkeys.
• iOS: Someone with access to Apple’s developer program needs to look into that.

Might be possible to use

• Keyman for all platforms (no idea how to implement custom shift states)
• AHK on Windows
• Native driver on Windows, see also Neo2 driver (done)
• ASK on Android (done)
• Ukelele or keylayout XML files on OSX

Documentation

Document how to use this software, how to create new layouts, that Martin Krzywinski’ carpalx is used.

ASMO 663

Get access to the original standard and verify the layout is correct. I’ve seen different layouts in different publications.

This seems to be a photocopy of the layout, which matches our current layout:

Lulua hamza in klavaro

i genuinely love this layout and consider to use it for daily use. hence, i try to learn touch typing with it in past month.
then i've encounter problem with أ إ ىٔ ىٕ all the ٔ and ٕ addition doesn't showing in the klavaro practice programs.
furthermore i try online typing lesson such monkeytype.com or tybaa.com but the problem keep occurring. every hurf with ٔ addition keep identified as wrong words,
is there any solution for this?

Diversify corpus data sources

Right now the corpora used are heavily leaning towards MSA (i.e. the news) without diacritics. It would be nice to include literary and scientific Arabic, as well as kid’s books (which usually contain diacritics).

Website colorscheme

Figure out a good, readable colorscheme for the website and layout SVG’s.

Words typed in Lulua are not identical to words typed in other default layouts

Making a new keyboard layout is such an ambitious goal, but it's not easy especially for an Arabic Layout. And I respect that!

The hamza mechanic is quite unique and I like it. Though, it may cause issues for the uniformity of the word.
For example, the word "أحمد" (Lulua) is not identical to "أحمد".
There is a difference in the Unicode encoding which may cause huge problems in search, registration forms, etc...