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

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 1 Dec 2011, Sami Eljabali wrote:
> 
> 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.
>
> *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.

As far as I can tell, nothing stops a Web browser or operating system from 
implementing this kind of thing today. No need for the specification to 
say anything special.


On Thu, 1 Dec 2011, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> 
> 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.

Supporting this kind of thing is definitely on the table, but as you hint 
above, it needs more research first.


On Sun, 4 Dec 2011, Sami Eljabali wrote:
>
> I feel more thought could be put in swaying IME's off OSs, as it is 
> limiting in availability for all.

I don't understand. Everybody has an operating system. Why would putting 
things in the operating system limit availability? Operating systems and 
their GUIs are responsible for almost everything that a browser does, at 
one level or another.


On Sun, 4 Dec 2011, Sami Eljabali wrote:
>
> By not moving IME's off OSes, you're asking every OS connecting to the 
> internet to support this feature. Netbooks for example, may just have a 
> native web browser on it. Would its OS then need to implement its own 
> IME for a few languages for their entry? Instead its web browser could 
> just support the input field, given they can render them.

On Sun, 4 Dec 2011, Ryosuke Niwa wrote:
>
> Why would implementing IME for such an OS be harder than implementing 
> one for the web browser?

Indeed. From the spec's point of view, they're more or less equivalent.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'