[whatwg] Proposal in supporting the writing of "Arabizi"

[Sami Eljabali]

Hello, I apologize if this an incorrect forum to propose new html features
in which case you may disregard this email, however should you know a more
appropriate forum then please let me know, else I ask you to please entertain
this email. :)


There's a need for phonetic based keyboard support for Arabic speaking
users on today's internet. There are two primary reasons for this:

1) Many Arabic speaking users don't surf in Arabic. A good portion of them
are in non-arabic speaking countries, hence more often than not have
non-arabic keyboards therefore finding it difficult to write Arabic on the
internet. There are on the contrary, virtual Arabic keyboards on the OS
level, as well as on sites like Google <http://www.google.ae/> addressing
this, however phonetically spelling out a word, and seeing a list of words
containing the one you were trying to spell out is dramatically more
effective than the counterpart.

2) It vastly aids those with lacking a thorough Arabic education to
properly to spell out what they phonetically know, hence allows a greater
audience including non-natives to write in Arabic.

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*Proposal:*

Have the interpreter described above be embedded within browsers and
enabled when users click and focus on text fields defined as: <input
type="text" lang="arabizi"> to interpret
Arabizi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_chat_alphabet>as Arabic.
Should a browser not support it, then the <input type="text"> would be the
fallback attribute leaving users writing in a plain text field.

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*Advantages of a Browser Implementation*

1) Guaranteed availability and ease of use for users continually relying on
this feature, opposed to using third party service
<http://www.yamli.com>or installed software.

2) Exposure to the majority of users in need of this capability.


Furthermore, we believe the "lang" attribute opens doors in supporting
other languages. Even showing a virtual keyboard for most spoken languages,
and its variations, would ultimately ensure the ability everyone to express
themselves in their language(s) of choosing on the internet.


Your feedback is more than appreciated.

Thank you for your time,

Sami Eljabali

Daniel Bates