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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Adding arabic letters jeem, peh, and veh to keyboard layout in Linux

The letters

چ
پ
ڤ
Do not come on the standard layout of arabic keyboard on linux. It is easy to add them.
You will need to edit /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ara and log-out and login again.
The need to edit only the lines corresponding to they keys you'll attach those letters to. I chose the key corresponding to
ج
ب
ف
(naturally).
The 3 modified lines are:
key { [ Arabic_feh, 0x100fef9 , Arabic_veh ] };
key { [ Arabic_jeem, less , Arabic_tcheh ] };
key { [ Arabic_beh, bracketleft, Arabic_peh ] };
Notice that the new characters are in the third position. The first position is the letter typed when you press the key. The second position is the letter if you were pressing shift, and the third one is the letter if you were pressing the 3rd level selector key. To know which key you have (or to change it to a more convenient one) to go System>Preferences>Keyboard, Mappings tab, click on "Options" then click "Key to choose 3rd leve" then choose whichever key you prefer.
Enjoy your new characters :)

1 comment:

Shady M. Najib said...

just for the record چ, پ and ڤ aren't Arabic letters :)