Arabic keyboard on Mac missing ذ and ّ ?

Question

Level 1

6 points

Arabic keyboard on Mac missing ذ and ّ ?

I posted pictures here so that you can see the issue clearly:
http://www.incendiaryimage.com/sketchbook/arabic-keyboard-mac-missing/

But I just noticed that the Arabic keyboard on my Mac (OS X 10.6) doesn’t have the ” ذ ” and ” ّ ” keys. They should be mapped to the upper-leftmost key on the keyboard ( ` and ~), but instead I get “٫” and “٬” . I think that’s an apostrophe and a little apostrophe.

That isn't something I should have to hack to fix. Does anyone know an elegant solution?

BlackBook, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 12:56 PM

Reply

Answer 1

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Nov 20, 2009 12:57 PM in response to ddegner

Which keyboard layout/language do you have assigned?

Reply

Answer 2

ddegner Author

Level 1

6 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:02 PM in response to K T

"Arabic - PC", though you run into the same issue with straight "Arabic". I'm wondering if it runs across all languages?

Reply

Answer 3

ddegner Author

Level 1

6 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:05 PM in response to ddegner

The standard mapping is like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Arabic

but apple's isn't standard

Reply

Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,904 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:26 PM in response to ddegner

ذ (U+0630) is at Option/alt + 3 on Arabic PC and Arabic, and at v on Arabic Qwerty.

Reply

Answer 5

ddegner Author

Level 1

6 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:33 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

That works, but using an alt key to type one of the more common letters in the Arabic alphabet is a bit ridiculous.

Reply

Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,904 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:36 PM in response to ddegner

ّ (U+651) is at Shift + i on Arabic and Shift + w on Arabic qwerty. On Arabic PC could it be on the extra key present on ISO keyboards?

Reply

Answer 7

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,904 points

Nov 20, 2009 1:42 PM in response to ddegner

That works, but using an alt key to type one of the more common letters in the Arabic alphabet is a bit ridiculous.

You can tell Apple how you would like their layout changed here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

It is also easy to make it do whatever you want with this

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?siteid=nrsi&itemid=ukelele

And in the meantime you can try one of the alternatives others have made over the years, e.g.

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-arabic-keyboard-layout.html

Reply

Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,904 points

Nov 20, 2009 2:40 PM in response to ddegner

PS I emailed you a copy of an alternative Arabic PC (Win Vista) layout from a couple years ago which I think may have these characters in the right place. Why Apple decided to provide something which has them at different places I don't know.

Reply