Persian Keyboard

Get the Persian Experimental Standard Keyboard right here!

  Please note: this keyboard is optional.  Your computer already has a "farsi keyboard" which will suffice just fine and it is not necessary to use this new and improved keyboard at all.  However, you can do Persian a big favor by using this keyboard because it will aid you in NOT typing non-standard characters. It is based on Iranian Standard ISIRI 9147 and it is not clear at all why Microsoft did not implement this keyboard in Vista.

Before getting the Persian Experimental Standard Keyboard, you can try it out first using this online virtual simulation (aka Behdad's Editor.) If you like it, follow the instructions below and install it on your own computer. (Watch out though, you need to actually type the letters, you can't click on the pictures!)

1) Persian Standard Keyboard aka "Persian Experimental Standard" - Win2000 and WinXP version

If you're tired of not being able to type Persian numbers in Persian, definitely get this keyboard!

To get the Persian keyboard (zipped), here are directions. Note: this is for Win2000 & WinXP only. 

Download this package from one of the locations given:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/farsitools/persiankeyboard.zip?download

Click on the downloaded file to unzip.

Drag the two files in the zip folder ("Persian.dll" "Persian.msi")  out of the zip folder and onto the desktop.  Close your zip folder -- you're done with that.  Somewhere on the desktop, right click >>new >>folder and create a new folder called i386. Drag Persian.dll into i386. Now you're done with downloading and it's time to install.

To install: Double-click the file called "Persian.msi" making sure you leave the other file called "Persian.dll" in i386. (In case you try to put them both in the same folder, the installer won't "see" Persian.dll)

Now, the rest of the keyboard installation instructions will only apply if you have already enabled FA on your computer.  If you have not yet enabled FA, it won't understand why you want to install a keyboard on a language you don't use!

Go Start > Settings > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options and open. Then

Languages > Text Services and input languages > Details and then add the Persian Experimental Keyboard (you should see it under Farsi if you were successful with the download and installation) and hit Apply and OK as shown here:

You may need to restart to see the changes. You will definitely need to close out of Word and open again.

This picture is on a WinXP.

1) Persian Standard Keyboard aka "Persian Experimental Standard" - Vista version

The Vista version of the above keyboard is available here. The installation is extremely easy and there is almost nothing to do. The only tricky thing is that after unzipping all the files to one location or folder, don't mistakenly think you need to put any files into any folders, in other words, don't change the arrangement of all the files. All you need to do after unzipping is click on the setup.exe file. It will prompt you to click OK so you know it installed  itself properly. Then you may need to restart your computer. That's it. After that, you don't need to even do anything in the Control Panel (unless you want to disable the other FA keyboard so as to not have to toggle between two FA keyboards. To disable a keyboard, see the above section with the screen shots from WinXP and do the reverse process and REMOVE the FA keyboard rather than ADD it.) Whenever you have more than one keyboard enabled for any given language, if you look on your task bar (next to the clock), you'll see that next to the language, such as FA, there's a little keyboard symbol which you may depress in order to choose which of the FA keyboards you want to use. Again, in the list of keyboards, this one is called, "Persian Experimental Keyboard". Again, since it is a hassle to constantly have to toggle between keyboards for one language, if you DO want to disable the MS keyboard for Persian (FA) that ships with Windows, just look above to the previous explanation for WinXP and go into the control panel and perform roughly the reverse operation to remove the old keyboard.

The "Persian Experimental Standard" keyboard above has the defect that ZWNJ is achieved by hitting Shift b. This is a work-around. It is supposed to be on Shift spacebar. This situation has come about because Microsoft believes that only true spacing characters should be allowed on the space bar and ZWNJ is not, technically speaking a spacing character. If you would like to get a keyboard with ZWNJ on Shift spacebar, please see Ehsan Akhgari's Standard Persian Keyboard For Windows for the exact same keyboard but with just this one fix.

Please don't think you need stickers to label your keys! You can learn the layout in just a few hours. Here are two charts below to get started. Pick whichever you like!

Or,  here is a chart (PDF file) you can print out.

And here is a much more user-friendly chart sent in by Cyrus Adam.

Note: ZWNJ is to be found on the shift b key.

If the keyboard doesn't type Persian characters, you may, ahem,  wish to make sure the little box down in the right, bottom corner of the screen says FA because you may be typing in ENglish or something else.

ZWNJ is on shift b

Unicode Character 'RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK' (U+200F)

Unicode Character 'RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING' (U+202B)

Unicode Character 'RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE' (U+202E)

These characters are handy in forcing the direction of the cursor to right-to-left within a left-to-right environment. If you've ever tried to, for example, insert a line of Persian text into your English yahoo or gmail email and the exclamation point or period jumps to the wrong end of the line, you know what this is all about.  If you are attempting the perilous task of typing an ISBN, run of telephone numbers, page numbers or anything else including both numerals and hyphens, you'll also need these characters.

The Persian Experimental keyboard was designed by the Farsiweb Project . 

BACK TO PERSIAN WORD-PROCESSING  

This page was updated on August 23, 2009