Comment 24 for bug 62587

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > Very interesting suggestion to solve this by keyboard layout: we have the luxury
> > of building our own keyboards; we are in the middle of layout right now.
> >
> > This won't help other existing keyboards of course.
>
> Right. I didn't have that in mind. For Persian, most people don't use a
> labeled keyboard anyway, so the layout is not hardcoded by the hardware.
>
>
> > Behnam, IIRC we plan to see you here at OLPC when the Thai delegation visits us
> > very soon. In the meanwhile, I expect we can get interested people proposed
> > keyboard layouts for review.
>
> Err... I'm "Behdad", going to be in Boston Oct 7th..22th. "Behnam" is my
> brother in Iran :-).
>
> Behnam, Youssef, can you two send out a message to the Arabeyes list to gather a
> list of characters, then review current layouts and come up with a proposed one.
> CC me in all communications and I'll try to help time permitting. Thanks.

Sorry, Behdad for the delay. I don't think suggesting a new layout is a solution. Many typers are used to the current one and those ligatures are printed in all available keyboards. Apparently, ligatures on the keyboard inherit from old typewriters that don't support shaping ل + ا to a ligature.
I think the abilility to type a combination of characters should be enabled since it is needed by many languages other than Arabic. The most serious case is the Kurdish Arabic script layout: To type the phonem /e/ they need to type Ha' (ه) + ZWNJ which is not a solution for a so frequently typed letter. See http://lists.arabeyes.org/archives/general/2006/August/msg00010.html .