The Urdu keyboard is any

keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...

for

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

and

typewriter keyboard A typewriter is a machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking ...

s. Since the first Urdu

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

was made available in 1911, the layout has gone through various phases of evolution.Zia (1999a) With time, the variety of layouts introduced in the 1950s for mechanized compositions have reduced to very few that are compatible with the new

digital age The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during t ...

. Modern improvements in Urdu keyboard were pioneered by the

National Language Authority The National Language Promotion Department ( ur, ), formerly known as the National Language Authority (or Urdu Language Authority), is an autonomous regulatory institution established in 1979 to support the advancement and promotion of Urdu, w ...

() in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

, which standardized the linguistic aspects such as

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

and

lexicography Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretica ...

. These developments helped the keyboard layout to evolve from the

s to be compatible with

s, to increase the

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

and textual efficiency of the language, especially through modern

electronic media Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created digitally, but do not require el ...

Evolution of the Urdu keyboard

When Urdu was declared as the

national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...

of the independent Pakistan in 1947, a variety of keyboard designs were quickly brought into the market by various individuals and organizations. However, differences remained in the order of the keys and the number of characters. This underscored an urgent need for a standard form of keyboard adaptable for diverse users.

Third generation

In 1980, the National Language Authority of Pakistan developed a new keyboard layout for typewriters based on Naskh script. The keyboard had 46 keys to type 71 Urdu

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s, and

punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...

marks, and 21 key symbols for

arithmetic Arithmetic () is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers— addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th ...

calculations and digits. However, with the arrival of the digital age, the layout became inadequate for computerized processing that required

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

backup to select the shape of the character appropriate to the context, and the ability to store multiple language

character sets Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values that ...

. These issues were addressed through the standardization of keyboard.

Fourth generation

In 1998 National Language Authority, under Dr.

Attash Durrani Attash Durrani ( ur, ; 22 January 1952 – 30 November 2018) was a Pakistani linguist, researcher, critic, author, educationist, and gemologist. He wrote more than 275 books and approximately 500 papers in Urdu and English. His main disciplines o ...

's supervision started working on a research and development project to standardize the Urdu encoding. This resulted in the formation of () (UZT). In July 2000, UZT 1.01 was standardized for all kinds of electronic computing, communications, and storage. Based on this version, Urdu language support was incorporated into the Versions 3.1 and 4.0 of

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

. The Keyboard version 1 was finalized by NLA on December 14, 1999. In 2001, the

National Database and Registration Authority The National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) ( ur, ) is an independent and autonomous agency under the control of the Interior Secretary of Pakistan that regulates government databases and statistically manages the sensitive registra ...

of Pakistan fully adopted this keyboard for Data Entry operations of the Computerized National Identity Cards.

Phonetic Keyboard

Along with the UZT keyboards, phonetic keyboards have been developed for Urdu. Phonetic keyboards works with the sound of the words, e.g. 'a' button of the English keyboard contain an Urdu word which is similar to the sound of 'a' and same is the case for other characters. Though less common in the past, phonetic keyboards have seen wider use recently. CRULP (Center for research for Urdu language processing) has been working on phonetic keyboard designs for URDU and other local languages of Pakistan. Their Urdu Phonetic Keyboard Layout v1.1 for Windows is widely used and considered as a standard for typing Urdu on Microsoft platform. However it has not been adopted by Microsoft for any Windows platform.Parekh, R. (2008)
Can Urdu become the language of the internet?
Dawn Newspaper. 24 June. Retrieved on 21 May 2012.

Notes

References

* Afzal, M. (1997). Urdu Software Industry: Prospects, Problems and Need for Standards. ''4th National Computer Conference''.

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...

. * Afzal, M. and Hussain, S. (2002). Urdu computing standards: development of Urdu Zabta Takhti. (UZT) 1.01. Proceedings of the Multi Topic IEEE Conference (INMIC 2001) - Technology for the 21st Century. . pp. 216–22 * Dil, A.S. (1962). ''Pakistani Linguistics''. Linguistic Research Group of Pakistan. * Zia, K. (1996). Information Processing in Urdu. ''International Symposium on Multilingual Information Processing'', AIST, MITI,

Tsukuba is a city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 244,528 in 108,669 households and a population density of 862 persons per km². The percentage of the population aged over 65 was 20.3%. The total ar ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. March. * Zia, K. (1999a)
A Survey of Standardization in Urdu
''4th Symposium on Multilingual Information Processing'' (MLIT-4).

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

. CICC, Japan. * Zia, K (1999b). Information Processing in Urdu. International Symposium on Multilingual Information Processing, AIST, MITI,