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No standard keyboard layout existed for
Pashto language. There were certain layouts,
which were basically either the Arabic layout or the Persian layout
with mapping of the additional Pashto alphabet to certain keys.
These keyboard layouts are developed by certain companies who developed the localization
software for Pashto language. These keyboard layouts are not efficient i.e. fast typing of
Pashto language could not be done. The alphabet Tah (ط), Zah (ظ), Sad (ص), and
Dad (ض) are very rarely used in the
Pashto language. Therefore, these must be placed with shift state. Similarly other
alphabet also have different frequency of use in
Pashto language when compared with Arabic and Farsi.
Therefore, KHPALA PASHTO conducted an in-house research on the
frequency of the usage of each alphabet in
Pashto language. After that KHPALA PASHTO produced keyboard layout for Pashto
language. The keyboard layout for Normal, Shifted state, and Ctrl +
Alt state is shown in the following figures.
Some of the Arabic letters, which are not used in
Pashto like Teh Marbuta (ة), Arabic Kaf (ك) etc. are also mapped to
keys in the Ctrl +Alt state. This is done so as to facilitate the writing of Quranic verses using the same
Pashto keyboard. WinPashtu software uses these Keyboard Layouts. |
