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

[Sami Eljabali]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
Good luck pushing Apple & Microsoft in implementing this. If we create this
as a tag then we'd push every OS vendor to support it.


>
> 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.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
>