These keyboard layouts were created sometime between 2010 and 2011. The Windows version is unchanged since then but reportedly still works fine even for Windows 10. The Linux version has had to undergo some change, and, for now, consists of a simple Rakefile.
See below for installation instructions. PRs welcome!
In case de_dmg is not quite what you were looking for, there are three other projects the author is aware of and which also implement keyboard layouts for writing roman-script transcriptions of Arabic-script languages:
- University of Bayreuth's AABC project, which has a wider scope than just Arabic-script languages and also tries to cover mobile operating systems
- Cornelis van Lit's Orientalist Keyboard Layouts, available for both Windows and macOS
- University of Zurich's TRAPTO keyboard layout available for Windows and macOS
- the Alt-Latin layout, also available for Windows and macOS and nowadays maintained by Theodore S. Beers
If you know other such projects, I'd love to hear about and link to them!
The de_dmg layout began as an Arabic-only layout before some users wished for the ability to type other phonemes (such as the Persian s̱ or the Ottoman ż) as well. Unfortunately, PC keyboards, even with using all four levels (no modifier key; with Shift; with Alt Gr; with Alt Gr and Shift) don't provide enough keys to accomodate all required combinations of letters and diacritic symbols. Therefore we decided to have a dedicated key for all symbols required for Arabic and combine that with having keys for the diacritic symbols to freely combine them with any desired letter.
This is what the layout looks like:
- The first level (no modifier) is the default German QWERTZ layout, including all umlauts (ä, ü, ö) as well as ß.
- The second level (Shift as the modifier) is the same, but with uppercase letters.
- By using Alt Gr you reach the third level, which retains ¹, ², ³, @, €, ~, |, „, ”, ·, … and – as you might be used to. But it also has all of the Arabic phonemes (see table below) by putting the diacritized latin letters (mostly) to where their non-diacritized version are on the default German layout, (sometimes) on where the corresponding Arabic letter is on the US-based Arabic layout, and (in one case, unfortunately, with š being on the $ key), in a location that at least allows one to form a mnemonic hook.
- By combining Alt Gr with Shift, you get the same diacritized latin letters, but uppercase versions of them.
From left to right, with one empty column between:
- Level 1 (no modifier key)
- Level 2 (with Shift)
- Level 3 (with Alt Gr)
- Level 4 (Alt Gr + Shift)
| de_dmg | de | (ara) | de_dmg | de | (ara) | de_dmg | de | (ara) | de_dmg | de | (ara) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ^ | ^. | ذ | ° | ° | ḏ | ′ | Ḏ | ″ | ||||||
| ' | '. | ` | `. | ʿ (ع) | ˛. | |||||||||
| $ | š | ¼ | ||||||||||||
| empty | ½ | |||||||||||||
| empty | ¬ | |||||||||||||
| ʾ (ء) | ¸. | |||||||||||||
| empty | ł | |||||||||||||
| r | ṯ | ¶ | Ṯ | |||||||||||
| t | ṭ | ŧ | Ṭ | |||||||||||
| z | ẓ | ← | Ẓ | |||||||||||
| u | ū | ↓ | ||||||||||||
| i | ī | → | Ī | |||||||||||
| o | ō | ø | Ō | |||||||||||
| a | ā | æ | ||||||||||||
| s | ṣ | ſ | ||||||||||||
| d | ḍ | ð | ||||||||||||
| e | ē | đ | ||||||||||||
| g | ġ | ◌̄ | ||||||||||||
| h | ḥ | ħ | ||||||||||||
| g | ǧ | ◌̣. (underdot) | ||||||||||||
| ◌̇ (overdot) | ĸ | |||||||||||||
| l | ḷ | ł | ||||||||||||
| ◌̱ (underbar) | ˝. | ◌̬ (caron below) | empty | |||||||||||
| å | ^. | |||||||||||||
| ˇ. (caron above) | ’ | |||||||||||||
| empty | » | empty | › | |||||||||||
| x | ḫ | « | Ḫ | ‹ | ||||||||||
| ◌̄ (macron) | — |
- Note 1: Some cells show a symbol followed by a dot, for example "^.". Those are so-called "dead" keys where for anything to show up, the spacebar has to be pressed following the key.
- Note 2: "Ḫ" is a latin letter "h" with a breve, not a caron, below. The diacritic symbol on the "ö" key, on the other hand, is a caron below.
- Note 3: In order to combine a letter with one of the standalone diacritics provided, type the letter first, then, without hitting any other key, including spacebar, type the diacritic.
See the release page for installer files or just download the zip file directly, unzip, run setup.exe.
After installation, the DMG layout will be immediately available.
The following steps will all have to be executed in a terminal window. If you don't have experience with that or don't feel comfortable doing it, get a friend to do it. If she's got just a little bit of experience with Linux or another Unix-based operating system, chances are this will be easy for her.
| Heads up: de_dmg will only work with Xorg/X11-based Linux distributions, which, as of September of 2021, is still the majority. The author does not yet use a Wayland-based system on a regular basis. If you require support for Wayland, please do open an Issue! Merge Requests are of course also always welcome :-). Also, this is the older of the two layouts and was created sometime in 2012 ... please let me know if it should stop working in current versions of Xorg! |
sudo pacman -Sy git ruby-rake libxslt sed grep coreutils xkeyboard-config
sudo apt install git rake xsltproc sed grep coreutils xkb-data
sudo eopkg it git ruby libxslt sed grep coreutils
git clone https://github.com/sixtyfive/de_dmg.git
cd de_dmg/linux
sudo rake install
| After Installation, the layout (called German (DMG); the name is not l10n'd!) will not yet be available. Logging the user out and back in again should suffice to make it appear, but depending on whether that causes X to restart or not, a reboot might be required. |
| Heads up: each and every time your system updates the xkb-data package, the files modified by the last of the above commands will have any changes removed from them, and de_dmg will have to be installed anew. |
Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for information on how you can help.