Editing Arabic alphabet (section)

== Computers ==
The Arabic alphabet can be encoded using several [[character set]]s, including [[ISO-8859-6]], [[Windows-1256]] and [[Unicode]], the latter of which contains the "Arabic segment", entries U+0600 to U+06FF. However, none of the sets indicates the form that each character should take in context. It is left to the [[rendering (computer graphics)|rendering engine]] to select the proper [[glyph]] to display for each character.

Each letter has a position-independent encoding in Unicode, and the rendering software can infer the correct glyph form (initial, medial, final or isolated) from its joining context. That is the current recommendation. However, for compatibility with previous standards, the initial, medial, final and isolated forms can also be encoded separately.

===Unicode===
{{Main|Arabic script in Unicode}}
As of Unicode {{Unicode version|version=16.0}}, the Arabic script is contained in the following [[Unicode block|blocks]]:<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Scripts.txt | work=Unicode Character Database | title=UAX #24: Script data file | publisher=The Unicode Consortium}}</ref>
* [[Arabic (Unicode block)|Arabic]] (0600–06FF, 256 characters)
* [[Arabic Supplement]] (0750–077F, 48 characters)
* [[Arabic Extended-A]] (08A0–08FF, 96 characters)
* [[Arabic Extended-B]] (0870–089F, 42 characters)
* [[Arabic Extended-C]] (10EC0–10EFF, 7 characters)
* [[Arabic Presentation Forms-A]] (FB50–FDFF, 631 characters)
* [[Arabic Presentation Forms-B]] (FE70–FEFF, 141 characters)
* [[Rumi Numeral Symbols]] (10E60–10E7F, 31 characters)
* [[Indic Siyaq Numbers]] (1EC70–1ECBF, 68 characters)
* [[Ottoman Siyaq Numbers]] (1ED00–1ED4F, 61 characters)
* [[Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols]] (1EE00—1EEFF, 143 characters)

The basic Arabic range encodes the standard letters and diacritics but does not encode contextual forms (U+0621-U+0652 being directly based on [[ISO 8859-6]]). It also includes the most common diacritics and [[Arabic-Indic digits]]. U+06D6 to U+06ED encode Qur'anic annotation signs such as "end of ''[[ayah]]''" ۝ۖ and "start of ''[[Rub El Hizb|rub el hizb]]''" ۞. The Arabic supplement range encodes letter variants mostly used for writing African (non-Arabic) languages. The Arabic Extended-A range encodes additional Qur'anic annotations and letter variants used for various non-Arabic languages.

The Arabic Presentation Forms-A range encodes contextual forms and ligatures of letter variants needed for Persian, [[Urdu]], Sindhi and Central Asian languages. The Arabic Presentation Forms-B range encodes spacing forms of Arabic diacritics, and more contextual letter forms. The Arabic Mathematical Alphabetical Symbols block encodes characters used in Arabic mathematical expressions.

See also the notes of the section on [[#Modified letters|modified letters]].

===Keyboards===
{{see also|Keyboard layout|Arabic keyboard}}
[[File:KB Arabic MAC.svg|thumb|450px|Arabic Mac keyboard layout]]
[[File:KB Arabic.svg|thumb|450px|Arabic PC keyboard layout]]
[[File:Intellark4qwerty.png|thumb|450px|[[Intellark]] imposed on a QWERTY keyboard layout]]

Keyboards designed for different nations have different layouts, so proficiency in one style of keyboard, such as Iraq's, does not transfer to proficiency in another, such as Saudi Arabia's. Differences can include the location of non-alphabetic characters.

All Arabic keyboards allow typing Roman characters, e.g., for the URL in a [[web browser]]. Thus, each Arabic keyboard has both Arabic and Roman characters marked on the keys. Usually, the Roman characters of an Arabic keyboard conform to the [[QWERTY]] layout, but in [[North Africa]], where [[French language|French]] is the most common language typed using the Roman characters, the Arabic keyboards are [[AZERTY]].

To encode a particular written form of a character, there are extra code points provided in Unicode which can be used to express the exact written form desired. The range ''Arabic presentation forms A'' (U+FB50 to U+FDFF) contain ligatures while the range ''Arabic presentation forms B'' (U+FE70 to U+FEFF) contains the positional variants. These effects are better achieved in Unicode by using the ''[[zero-width joiner]]'' and ''[[zero-width non-joiner]]'', as these presentation forms are deprecated in Unicode and should generally only be used within the internals of text-rendering software; when using Unicode as an intermediate form for conversion between character encodings; or for backwards compatibility with implementations that rely on the hard-coding of glyph forms.

Finally, the Unicode encoding of Arabic is in ''logical order'', that is, the characters are entered, and stored in computer memory, in the order that they are written and pronounced without worrying about the direction in which they will be displayed on paper or on the screen. Again, it is left to the rendering engine to present the characters in the correct direction, using Unicode's [[bi-directional text]] features. In this regard, if the Arabic words on this page are written left to right, it is an indication that the Unicode rendering engine used to display them is out of date.<ref>For more information about encoding Arabic, consult the Unicode manual available at [https://www.unicode.org/ The Unicode website]</ref><ref>See also [https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/Multilingual_Computing_with_Arabic_and_Arabic_Transliteration.pdf Multilingual Computing with Arabic and Arabic Transliteration: Arabicizing Windows Applications to Read and Write Arabic & Solutions for the Transliteration Quagmire Faced by Arabic-Script Languages] and [https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/multilingual_computing_arabic.ppt A PowerPoint Tutorial (with screen shots and an English voice-over) on how to add Arabic to the Windows Operating System]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110911024303/https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/Multilingual_Computing_with_Arabic_and_Arabic_Transliteration.pdf |date=11 September 2011 }}</ref>

There are competing online tools, e.g. Yamli editor, which allow entry of Arabic letters without having Arabic support installed on a PC, and without knowledge of the layout of the Arabic keyboard.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.yamli.com/press/| title = Yamli in the News}}</ref>

===Handwriting recognition===
The first software program of its kind in the world that identifies Arabic handwriting in real time was developed by researchers at [[Ben-Gurion University]] (BGU).

The prototype enables the user to write Arabic words by hand on an electronic screen, which then analyzes the text and translates it into printed Arabic letters in a thousandth of a second. The error rate is less than three percent, according to Dr. Jihad El-Sana, from BGU's department of computer sciences, who developed the system along with master's degree student Fadi Biadsy.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.israel21c.org/technology/arabic-handwriting-gets-computerized-thanks-to-israeli-innovation/| title = Israel 21c| date = 14 May 2007}}</ref>

==== Variations ====

{| class="wikitable" 
|+ '''The modern Hijā’ī sequence (excluding {{transliteration|ar|DIN|hamzah}}) in 15 fonts:'''
|- class="nowrap"
| style="text-align:center;font-size:180%" | {{lang|ar|[[ي]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[و]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ه]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ن]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[م]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ل]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ك]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ق]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ف]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[غ]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ع]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ظ]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ط]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ض]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ص]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ش]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[س]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ز]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ر]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ذ]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[د]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[خ]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ح]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ج]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ث]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ت]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ب]]}}{{lang|ar|&nbsp;}}{{lang|ar|[[ا]]}}
| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;font-size:100%;" | Hijā’ī sequence 
|-
| rowspan="15" | [[File:Arabic in 15 fonts 2020-03-25 1554.png|830px|center]]
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#00007f;background-color:#00007f" | • 
| class="nowrap" style="font-size:95%" | [[noto fonts|Noto]] [[Nastaliq]] 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#003399;background-color:#003399" | • 
| class="nowrap" style="font-size:95%" | [[Scheherazade New]]
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#00549a;background-color:#00549a" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Lateef 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#007670;background-color:#007670" | • 
| class="nowrap" style="font-size:95%" | Noto [[Naskh (script)|Naskh]] Arabic 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#00b050;background-color:#00b050" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Markazi Text 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#49da00;background-color:#49da00" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Noto [[sans serif|Sans]] Arabic 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#ffc900;background-color:#ffc900" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | El Messiri 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#ff9800;background-color:#ff9800" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Lemonada&nbsp;
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#ff00aa;background-color:#ff00aa" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Changa&nbsp;
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#c900ff;background-color:#c900ff" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Mada 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#9933ff;background-color:#9933ff" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Noto [[kufic|Kufi]] Arabic 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#6600ff;background-color:#6600ff" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Reem Kufi 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#1f00bf;background-color:#1f00bf" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Lalezar 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#00007f;background-color:#00007f" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Jomhuria 
|- 
| style="font-size:80%;text-align:center;color:#00003f;background-color:#00003f" | • 
| style="font-size:95%" | Rakkas 
|}