FirefoxOS 2.5 Persian Keyboard

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi everybody,

After we successfully finished translating FirefoxOS, I was trying to
install it on my system so I can test it, and I finally made it! I know
it's not a exciting news for some of you, which already have a device. I
just bury my jealousy here. You can see some pictures of it here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/apps/gallery/s/WJbnwDrq67il1jf>[1].
These are mostly the pictures from places that I thought the translations
have ambiguity or problematic, and we need to take care of them.

While I was testing, I realized that there's no Persian keyboard in FxOS,
so I tried to make one, but meanwhile Delphine pointed me to Bugzilla that
there's an ongoing activity there
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1033185>[2]. A guy named
Thatoo was already working on a layout for Persian (I CCed this email to
him too), but I found it incomplete, so I took it and changed it to be more
complete. I used Android keyboard as a guide. See the FxOS Persian keyboard
here <http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/tVpkURz9uVqB6af>[3] and here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/IaCDVoZcSYcNJcC>[4], and Android
4.4 Persian keyboard here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/ErRCq4E05mqGEkz>[5] as a
comparison.

What is added in comparison to Thatoo's layout is punctuation when holding
'،' (comma) key, signs when holding the '.' (dot) key (both similar to
android keyboards), more alternative characters when holding keys like 'ا'
‪(الف), ‪'ی'... added the numbers page so we have the Persian numbers and ﷼
key and other characters like "» «". Also added the ZWNJ key on the left of
"ظ". Unfortunately it was impossible to add that button near space key and
I couldn't find out how to add an icon to it, but I will ask tomorrow if
it's possible. For adding the ZWNJ key on third row I had to remove 'ژ' and
put in as an alternative for 'ز'. Which I think is fine while 'ژ' is pretty
uncommon character.

Please let me know what you think about the keyboard layout and consider
this an urgent one, while having a Persian phone without a Persian keyboard
is super useless.

Best Wishes,
Arash

[1] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/apps/gallery/s/WJbnwDrq67il1jf
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1033185
[3] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/tVpkURz9uVqB6af
[4] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/IaCDVoZcSYcNJcC
[5] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/ErRCq4E05mqGEkz

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi Yogo/Thatoo!

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Yogo <yogo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Before everything, bravo for the translation of FFOS.
>

Thank you! You should have used "reply all" button, so everyone could see
your comment not just me. I just reply this to all.


> That looks great! It's just a shame you didn't inspire from my layout and
> decided to follow android because I really asked around me to optimized the
> localization of each key. I asked my friends and teachers.
>

I appreciate the work you have done, but the layout is not actually the
Android one, but it's the standard qwerty keyboard layout based on ISI9147
standard of Persian layout <https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/صفحه‌کلید_فارسی>[1].
As Behnam Esfahbod have already mentioned on bugzilla page, some people
have tried over a decade to make this layout the standard layout for all
devices. It's the layout that is currently used on Windows, Unix and
(probably) Mac/iOS systems. If we want to follow our heart on these
matters, FxOS will shortly become IE (the browser) of the OS world. The one
that doesn't follow the conventions.

Thatoo has made two layouts for Persian, you can see it here
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8662234>[2] and here
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8662236>[3].


> Anyway let's work on this one now as it is more complete. I didn't know
> about zwnj, and most Iranian don't neither by the way, I surprised some
> already... It's great.
> I think it would be more logical to put it just above space, between ذ and
> ر.
>

That's a good idea! Lets see what others say about it.


> Then, I really think that a second keyboard with 11 letters for tablets
> would be useful, don't you?
>
>
I prefer only one layout just for consistency, but we can discuss.

So guys, please tell us your idea about these options:
1) The whole keyboard layout design
2) The place of ZWNJ key
3) If we need two layouts for Persian

Best Wishes,
Arash

[1] https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/صفحه‌کلید_فارسی
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8662234
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8662236

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi,

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 11:10 AM, R ehb <reza.ha...@googlemail.com>
wrote
>
>
> I still waiting for your Repo Link. Arash.
>

​Sorry. I had connection issues yesterday couldn't push to Github. it's
here
https://github.com/arashm/gaia/commit/e0180a24c0f47426e1dddfdaafd5ba7e76ee5c7c​.
It's a work in progress while I need to fix tests too.


> - Change English number to Persian Number for Number key layout in normal
> mode.
>

​We need a regular phone to test this. I have a feeling that if we do this,
dialing might be impossible. Also in Android the Number keypad is in Latin.​


> 2- ZWNJ:
> -I prefer put it in the right side of the space key looks like Android
> Keyboard.
>

​It was impossible. The last row is generated automatically, so wherever ​I
put the the zwnj key, it either goes at the beginning of the row at the end
of it, which makes it much uglier. I will investigate more though. But also
give me your idea if it wasn't possible to put the key near the spacebar.

​Best Wishes,
Arash​

[Amir Farsi]

Hi there.I think the persian keyboard layout should be completely like Persian standard keyboard layout.Main problem is we haven't any standard keyboard layout for Persian, on mobile phones.The ISIRI 9147 standard is for computer keyboards. In computer we have a more complete keyboard and more space than mobile phones. As result, I think before having any standard layout for mobile phones we will be have some problems with the place of keys. Before having an standard keyboard for  phones, we should try make key on phone more smaller for having keys like computer standard as well as ISIRI 9147, a keyboard like Samsung keyboard on it' phones, not android original keyboard. Although Samsung keyboard haven't zwnj, but it's keys are small and we can implement ISIRI 9147 and zwnj on a keyboard like it.

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dev-l...@lists.mozilla.org
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[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks all for your comments, here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/qDzM3sfD04yGOZU>[1] is what I
ended up based on your comments, specially Behareh's comment was very
helpful. These are the changes I made:

Main Layout:
- Moved ZWNJ from third row to last row between '.' and Enter.
- Made backspace smaller and added both 'چ' and 'ژ' both on third row.
ALT keys on main layout:
'ض': ['۱', '1'],
'ص': ['۲', '2'],
'ث': ['۳', '3'],
'ق': ['۴', '4'],
'ف': ['۵', '5'],
'غ': ['۶', '6'],
'ع': ['۷', '7'],
'ه': ['۸', '8'],
'خ': ['۹', '9'],
'ح': ['۰', '0'],
'ا': 'آ أ ء',
'ی': 'ئ ي',
'ت': 'ة',
'ک': 'ك',
'ه': 'ﺓ ۀ',
'.': 'ءٔٓ', (علائم نگارشی مثل فتحه، کسره، تنوین...)
'،': ':!؟؛-«»'

Numbers/Signs Layout:
- Moved '&' key to third row and replaced it by ','
- Moved '_' key between '.' and Enter (in place of ZWNJ key)
- Added both '+' and '%' into second row.
ALT keys on numbers/signs layout:
'۱': ['1', '¹'],
'۲': ['2', '²'],
'۳': ['3', '³'],
'۴': ['4', '⁴'],
'۵': ['5', '⁵'],
'۶': ['6', '⁶'],
'۷': ['7', '⁷'],
'۸': ['8', '⁸'],
'۹': ['9', '⁹'],
'۰': ['0', '⁰'],
'﷼': ['$', '€', '£', '¢', '¥'],
'»': ['"', '“', '”'],
'«': ['\'', '‘', '’'],
'؟': ['?', '¿'],
'!': ['¡'],
'+': ['-', '×', '÷', '±'],
'؛': [';'],
'.': ''

Please let me know of your idea about this one.

Best Wishes,
Arash

[1] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/qDzM3sfD04yGOZU

[mousav...@gmail.com]

​Hi again,

Sorry for sending two emails in one day. I just find out how to add Unicode
icons to keys. The closes character I could find in Unicode table for ZWNJ
was U+29D3. So with this change the main layout now looks like this
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/tL37U3l57dhPjXi>[1]. If you
happen to know a better character in Unicode table, please let me know to
use that instead.

Thanks,
Arash

[1] http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/tL37U3l57dhPjXi

[Amir Farsi]

Hi there.I think now Persian keyboard layout is useful. For info about ZWNJ Unicode code, it think you can is it from Behdad and Behnam Esfahbod(Bahare's Brothers).

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 2:25 AM, R ehb <reza.ha...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Arash,
> Thank you,
>
> 1- what's your comment use "فا" and "فارسی" instead of :
> label: 'Persian',
> shortLabel: 'Fa',
> ​
>

​Based on the documentation "Label"​ should be in English, but we can
change the shortLabel to "فا". If you guys think it's appropriate, I will
change to "فا".


> 2- And about ZWNJ, Android Keyboard use something like follow layout for
> ZWNJ, and I thought it more reasonable:
>

​As I mentioned, I can only use Unicode symbols as icon,​ so check the
Unicode symbols and find me a better alternative. I couldn't find one. So
we either have to use nothing or this one.

If I don't receive any more emails with more ideas, I will consider
everyone to be agreed with this layout and will submit the code for
submission in FxOS main repository.

Thanks,
Arash

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi!
​
On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 12:05 AM, Bahareh Esfahbod <
bahareh....@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. Isn't that better to put some alternatives (such as "«" and "»") on
> different keys instead of having them all in one key ("،")
>

​This is similar to Android keyboard. These keys "«"​
​ and "»"​
​ are also available as ​keys in Numbers layout. See here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/hpRL3OU9NUYFGou> on third row.
If you have a better idea let me know.


> 2. To me, the character you picked for ZWNJ looks more reasonable for ZWJ,
> instead of ZWNJ. I agree with Reza that the
> label Google uses in Android keyboard is a better option. I asked Behdad
> and he admitted that it's better to keep it consistent
> with Android keyboard (it's known, but there is no standard). He wasn't
> sure, but thought that the current label is a combination
> of 3 characters (if so, here is my guess on that: either U+25C2 U+2507
> U+25B8, or U+2BC7 U+2507 U+2BC8).
> If we agree that we'll continue using that label, I'll contact Roozbeh to
> ask for the right combination, but if we decide to have our
> own label, these are some characters I would consider for the label:
> U+27DB, U+27DA, U+21FC & U+21F9.
> I'll talk to Behnam about it as well, and will let you know.
>

​This was simply an awesome idea!​ So now during adding these symbols I
realized we can have custom CSS for each language. Here
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/RbUK8lu9OWE41AZ> is the main
layout after the changes. As you can see it's now much more aligned and
clean also I added the correct symbols as you suggested. Please say hello
and thank Behdad on my behalf ;)


> 3. I also prefer "فا" for the label.
>

​I changed it to "فا"​

​as you can see in the screenshot
<http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/RbUK8lu9OWE41AZ> I already
mentioned.​

In previous email I meant, if I don't receive any email *until tomorrow
night* I will submit the layout to upstream. Please let me know of your
ideas, if any.

Best Wishes,
Arash

[Sara Mansouri]

This is much much better than what I thought! Great job Arash, Bahareh and
Reza!
I don't know a lot about keyboard design but it feels great! specially ZWNJ!

On 19 November 2015 at 15:45, Bahareh Esfahbod <bahareh....@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks Arash. I really like the result. It's so neat!

>
>
>
>> 1. Isn't that better to put some alternatives (such as "«" and "»") on
>>> different keys instead of having them all in one key ("،")
>>>
>>
>> ​This is similar to Android keyboard. These keys "«"​
>> ​ and "»"​
>> ​ are also available as ​keys in Numbers layout. See here
>> <http://192.3.225.168/owncloud/index.php/s/hpRL3OU9NUYFGou> on third
>> row. If you have a better idea let me know.
>>
>

> I might come back on this before tomorrow night, but leave it as it is for
> now.

>
>>
>>
>>> Please say hello and thank Behdad on my behalf ;)
>>
>

> Consider it done :)
>
> Bests,
> Bahareh
>

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi Bahareh,

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Bahareh Esfahbod <
bahareh....@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you have only one alt character for a key, then Instead of tapping,
> holding and moving to left n right to reach that
> character, you can just tap and hold.
>
> Having the alt keys written at the corner of the keys makes it really
> simple and convenient
> for this matter.
>


This is a nice feature to have, but currently not possible, simply because
Keyboard app of FxOS doesn't implemented it. ​We can file a bug for this
and ask them to implement or we can work on it ourselves, but it won't be
added to FxOS 2.5 while that branch is now on feature freeze and only bug
fixes are accepted. Also it will take time to add this, so for sure it's a
no way for 2.5.

Best Wishes,
Arash

[Kazem Ebrahimi]

Hi Arash
i saw the layout, but i have a question. why do you try to put all key in one page? for example you can put ژ on ز key when the UPPER key is pressed like Android keyboard. or like آ key when the UPPER key pressed the ا key type آ character.

thanks

[Amir Farsi]

Hi all.Arash, please check if your designed keyboard is compatible with ISIRI 6219 standard which is more important than 9147 standard. The ISIRI 6219 standard title is "Persian information interchange and Display Mechanism, using Unicode" I described here Google Groups why 6219 is more important than 9147? While you haven't any standard for Persian keyboard on mobile phones, at least you should implement the 6219 standard on keyboard.I will send the 6219 and 9147 standard to you with a separate email, because I don't know can mailing list support attachment of emails?Thanks Arash.
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[mousav...@gmail.com]

Hi Amir,

Thanks for caring. First as you know, after ISIRI 9147 standard
introduced, ISIRI 6219 declared as deprecated, and I think we need to
always provide the latest standard as default to our users. While you
mentioned it, this is now the standard layout in Windows, it's the
standard layout in Android and it's this standard layout for Unix like
systems including Mac and Linux. I couldn't understand your logic why
6219 is more important, while 9147 is the official and common layout
now.

Another thing, I don't know why you guys insist about an standard
layout for mobile devices. There's no such thing. I haven't heard a
qwerty layout for PCs and a qwerty layout for mobile devices. There's
no difference where it's used, it's just qwerty. And here we don't
need a different standard. We just use 9147.

My vote is just 1 vote in the community, but I still like to keep the
current 9147 as the official layout for FxOS. But nobody can stop you
from creating a keyboard application to provide other layouts. But I
strongly disagree with it, because old keyboard layouts were using
wrong Unicode characters and now we can see for example a search in
Google for کلیک is different than كليك (which is using Arabic ك and
ي). Even fixing these Unicode characters in old layouts is not a good
option. We need to stop this ambiguity of too many layouts somewhere
with providing only one true layout.

Bests,
Arash

[mousav...@gmail.com]

Just to clarify, I'm not disagree with having an application so users
can change their layout based on their preference, but having
different layout as default is not my preference.

[Amir Farsi]

Hi Arash.First, I want say to you opinion about implement that ISIRI 6219 is replaced with 9147 is invalid.The ISIRI 9147 in newer version of ISIRI 2901, not related to ISIRI 6219. Because both of 2901 and 9147 are about standard keyboard layout, but the 6219 standard is about Unicode codes of Persian chars.You can see these links:https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%87%E2%80%8C%DA%A9%D9%84%DB%8C%D8%AF_%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%B3%DB%8C
Specially see here https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B2%DB%8C%D8%B1%DB%8C_%DB%B2%DB%B9%DB%B0%DB%B1
Also please read here carefully:https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B2%DB%8C%D8%B1%DB%8C_%DB%B6%DB%B2%DB%B1%DB%B9

After that you can see here which says 9147 is a replacement for 2901 and 6219 is used in it and isn't pervious version of 9147: 
https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B2%DB%8C%D8%B1%DB%8C_%DB%B9%DB%B1%DB%B4%DB%B7
Really, the list of equal correct Unicode codes which are  equal to Persian chars are not part of 9147. These are part of 6219 and 6219 used for design 9147. 6219 saying equal Unicode code of each Persian char without attention to keyboard layout.

Finally I want say if we can't Implement 9147 layout in mobile or another device, we should check if this keyboard chars and their equal Unicode codes are compatible with list of Unicode codes in 6219. It's not related to layout of keyboard.
Thanks.

[Amir Farsi]

Hi Arash.I added more description to my Topic at here Google Groups Please read second post of that topic for more information about 6219 standard.

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