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

[Mark Callow]

I think what is being requested by the OP is very very different from
the things being requested in the W3C bugs linked from the below
referenced wiki page (which seem like good ideas, but please ensure that
'+' can be entered in phone numbers).

As Sergiusz Wolicki pointed the OP is requesting an IME and IMEs already
exist for several languages. The corollary of this is that hooks for
IMEs exist in all major operating systems. As Sergiusz also pointed out,
users will want this functionality available in any text field.  I think
it would be better to develop an Arabic IME for the OS rather than
embedding it in browsers. Maybe such a thing already exists.

Have you any idea of the size of the dictionary and supporting data
needed for the Japanese IME? It is quite large. I do not think browser
vendors will want to bloat their products with large IME dictionaries
for even one language so any browser-based IMEs will inevitably become
separate downloads. In which case there is no benefit compared to a
separately downloaded OS-based IME and the disadvantage that it can't be
used with any text field on the system.

Regards

    -Mark


On 02/12/2011 03:36, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Sami Eljabali <seljabali at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>> *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.
> We are looking into something like this for many languages.  I've
> attempted to record this as a use-case on
> <http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Text_input_keyboard_mode_control>, but I
> can't figure out how to upload images yet.  Once I do, I'll add
> screenshots, an explanation, and a link to this thread.