Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Installation
      1. Emacs
      2. Vim
2. Languages
   1. Arabic
      1. Table
   2. Hebrew
      1. Table
   3. Phoenician
      1. Table
   4. Russian
3. The code
   1. Vim
   2. Emacs
4. References

Introduction

This projects aims to make writing Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Russian easier in Emacs and Vim by defining an intuitive keymap for QWERTY users. If you are using another editor or want to contribute a language, you are welcome to contribute.

This is a living document to try to find the most intuitive and easy to learn keymap for the languages found herein.

This document is written in the form of a literate program, which produces the code in a self-contained way in the same document ^{LiteratePrograKnuth1984,Literate.prograRamsey1994}.

Installation

You can install all files just by doing

make install

Otherwise you can follow the following instructions to understand the process in each editor.

Emacs

Copy the file you want from the dist folder somewhere in your computer. For instance, if you choose the arabic version of qwerty-everywhere and you copy it into the path ~/.emacs.d/arabic-qwerty-everywhere.el, add the followint into you ~/.emacs.d/init.el file

(load "~/.emacs.d/arabic-qwerty-everywhere.el")

and now you can set this keymap by M-x set-input-method and choosing the arabic-qwerty-everywhere.

Vim

Copy the file you want from the dist folder to ~/.vim/keymaps/ and activate the keymap by doing

:set keymap=arabic-qwerty-everywhere
:set rightleft

in the case that you chose the arabic version. You can go back to your default by doing

:set keymap
:set norightleft

Languages

Arabic

Table

Key	Unicode	Arabic	Name
a	0627	ا	ALEF
A	0649	ى	ALEF MAKSURA
~a	0622	آ	ALEF WITH MADDA ABOVE
'a	0623	أ	ALEF with HAMZA ABOVE
'i	0625	إ	ALEF with HAMZA BELOW
-a	0671	ٱ	ALEF WASLA
b	0628	ب	BEH
p	067e	پ	PEH
t	062a	ت	TEH
.t	062b	ث	THEH
j	062c	ج	JEEM
H	062d	ح	HAH
x	062e	خ	KHAH
%h	0686	چ	TCHEH
^h	0685	څ	HAH WITH THREE DOTS ABOVE
d	062f	د	DAL
.d	0630	ذ	THAL
z	0632	ز	ZAIN
r	0631	ر	REH
.s	0634	ش	SHEEN
s	0633	س	SEEN
c	0635	ص	SAD
.c	0636	ض	DAD
D	0636	ض	DAD
Z	0638	ظ	ZAH
.T	0638	ظ	ZAH
T	0637	ط	TAH
g	063a	غ	GHAIN
e	0639	ع	AIN
q	0642	ق	QAF
f	0641	ف	FEH
k	0643	ك	KAF
l	0644	ل	LAM
m	0645	م	MEEM
n	0646	ن	NOON
h	0647	ه	HEH
:h	0629	ة	TEH MARBUTA
w	0648	و	WAW
'w	0624	ؤ	WAW with HAMZA ABOVE
y	064a	ي	YEH
'y	0626	ئ	YEH with HAMZA ABOVE
0	0660	٠	Arabic-Indic digit 0
1	0661	١	Arabic-Indic digit 1
2	0662	٢	Arabic-Indic digit 2
3	0663	٣	Arabic-Indic digit 3
4	0664	٤	Arabic-Indic digit 4
5	0665	٥	Arabic-Indic digit 5
6	0666	٦	Arabic-Indic digit 6
7	0667	٧	Arabic-Indic digit 7
8	0668	٨	Arabic-Indic digit 8
9	0669	٩	Arabic-Indic digit 9
^	0651	ّ	SHADDA
'	0621	ء	HAMZA
oo	0652	ْ	SUKUN
.a	064e	َ	FATHA
aN	064b	ً	FATHATAN
u	064f	ُ	DAMMA
.u	064f	ُ	DAMMA
uN	064c	ٌ	DAMMATAN
i	0650	ِ	KASRA
.i	0650	ِ	KASRA
iN	064d	ٍ	KASRATAN
;	061b	؛	Arabic Semicolon
\_	0640	ـ	TATWEEL
,	060c	،	Arabic Comma
?	061f	؟	Arabic Question Mark
\_A	fdf2	ﷲ	Allah
\_S	fdfa	ﷺ	SALLALLAHOU ALAYHE WASALLAM

Hebrew

Table

Key	Unicode	Hebrew	Name
a	5d0	א	alef
v	5d1	ב	bet
.v	fb31	בּ	bet
b	fb31	בּ	bet
g	5d2	ג	gimel
.g	fb32	גּ	gimel
j	fb32	גּ	gimel
d	5d3	ד	dalet
.d	fb33	דּ	dalet with dagesh
h	5d4	ה	he
w	5d5	ו	vav
z	5d6	ז	zayin
H	5d7	ח	het
T	5d8	ט	tet
y	5d9	י	yod
x	5db	כ	kaf
k	fb3b	כּ	kaf
X	5da	ך	final kaf
K	fb3a	ךּ	final kaf
l	5dc	ל	lamed
m	5de	מ	mem
M	5dd	ם	final mem
n	"5e0"	נ	nun
N	5df	ן	final nun
c	"5e1"	ס	samekh
.c	fb41	סּ	samekh + dagesh
e	"5e2"	ע	ayin
f	"5e4"	פ	pe
p	fb44	פּ	pe + dagesh
F	"5e3"	ף	final pe
P	fb43	ףּ	final fe + dagesh
;t	"5e6"	צ	tsadi
;T	"5e5"	ץ	final tsadi
q	"5e7"	ק	qof
r	"5e8"	ר	resh
s	"5e9"	ש	shin
.s	fb2a	שׁ	shin
S	fb2b	שׂ	shin
t	5ea	ת	tav
.t	fb4a	תּ	tav
\_:	5b0	ְ	sheva
\_E	5b1	ֱ	hataf segol
\_A	5b2	ֲ	hataf patah
\_O	5b3	ֳ	hataf qamats
i	5b4	ִ	hiriq
\_Y	5b5	ֵ	tsere
E	5b6	ֶ	segol
AA	5b7	ַ	patah
AO	5b8	ָ	qamats
o	5b9	ֹ	holam
u	5bb	ֻ	qubuts
D	5bc	ּ	dagesh
]T	5bd	ֽ	meteg
]Q	5be	־	maqaf
]R	5bf	ֿ	rafe
]p	5c0	׀	paseq
]SR	5c1	ׁ	shin-dot
]SL	5c2	ׂ	sin-dot
]P	5c3	׃	sof-pasuq
VV	5f0	װ	double vav
VY	5f1	ױ	vav-yod
YY	5f2	ײ	double yod

Phoenician

Table

Key	Unicode	Phoenician	Name
a	010900	𐤀	alf
b	010901	𐤁	bet
v	010901	𐤁	bet
g	010902	𐤂	gaml
d	010903	𐤃	delt
h	010904	𐤄	he
w	010905	𐤅	wau
z	010906	𐤆	zai
H	010907	𐤇	het
T	010908	𐤈	tet
y	010909	𐤉	yod
x	01090a	𐤊	kaf
k	01090a	𐤊	kaf
l	01090b	𐤋	lamd
m	01090c	𐤌	mem
n	01090d	𐤍	nun
c	01090e	𐤎	semk
e	01090f	𐤏	ain
p	010910	𐤐	pe
f	010910	𐤐	pe
;t	010911	𐤑	sade
q	010912	𐤒	qof
r	010913	𐤓	rosh
s	010914	𐤔	shin
.s	010914	𐤔	shin
S	010914	𐤔	shin
t	010915	𐤕	tau
1	010916	𐤖	one
10	010917	𐤗	ten
20	010918	𐤘	twenty
100	010919	𐤙	one hundred
2	01091a	𐤚	two
3	01091b	𐤛	three
:	01091f	𐤟	separator

TODO Russian

The code

We are going to write the table to keymaps converters in emacs lisp, which is a dialect of lisp that runs the emacs editor.

Vim

First of all we write a function to convert a like such as

Z

0638

ظ

ZAH

into the vim format for keymaps

Z

This means, we only need the key and the hexadecimal unicode. The function for this is `keymap-line-to-vim`

(defun keymap-line-to-vim (line)
  "Example of a line:
    | Z | 0638 | ظ | ZAH | ⇒ Z  <char-0x0638> \" ظ - ZAH
  "
  (let ((key (first line))
        (code (second line))
        (symbol (third line))
        (name (fourth line)))
    (format "%s <char-0x%s> \" %s - %s"
            key code symbol name)))

For the whole table, we will assume that we are in a temporary buffer and we can insert text into it, then we can write directly the buffer to a file or retrieve the string. This greatly simplifies the code in emacs:

(defun keymap-to-vim (name table)
  (insert (format "let b:keymap_name = \"%s\"\n"
                  name))
  (insert "loadkeymap\n")
  (insert (string-join (mapcar #'keymap-line-to-vim table) "\n")))

Emacs

Since lisp is a homoiconic language we can actually create directly lisp code that will be loaded into emacs. For this we first create key-value pairs for each letters in the keymap-line-to-emacs-quail function and we wrap everything in a progn block to define a quail package.

(defun keymap-line-to-emacs-quail (line)
  `(,(format "%s" (first line))
    ,(string-to-number (format "%s" (second line)) 16)))

(defun keymap-to-emacs-quail (name language table)
  `(progn
    (require 'quail)
    (quail-define-package ,name ,language ,name)
    (quail-define-rules
      ,@(mapcar #'keymap-line-to-emacs-quail table))))

References

Bibliography

[LiteratePrograKnuth1984] Knuth, Literate Programming, The Computer Journal, 27, 97-111 (1984). link. doi. ↩

[Literate.prograRamsey1994] Ramsey, Literate programming simplified, IEEE Software, 11, 97-105 (1994). link. doi. ↩