While most of them offered unique keyboard layouts, many did not follow the required level of research that Bangla key layout needed. Bijoy, Proshika-shobdo and Proborton led this campaign. He provided a set of Bangla fonts and also offered a Bangla layout, different from the one developed by Munir Chowdhury.Ī number of second-generation Bangla solutions hit the market by the end of 1990s. Saif Shahid began working on this in 1983 and a complete Macintosh-based version appeared in the market in 1985. Though there were a number of individual initiatives, “Shahid Lipi” was the forerunner of first-generation Bangla solutions and the first complete Bangla computing interface. We needed software that could process the meaning of the pressed Bangla-labelled key, and fonts-set that could show the Bangla alphabets on the computer screen. It was later used in computer keyboards.īut for a computer, having a keyboard “layout” is not enough.

This was the first scientific Bangla layout. In 1965, Munir Chowdhury developed a Bangla layout for a typewriter’s QWERTY keyboard to reduce jamming of type-bars and increase the typing speed. So instead of inventing a Bangla keyboard altogether, all we needed for Bangla typing was to determine where to place Bangla alphabets on an English keyboard - be it for typewriter or computer. There were three major challenges for Bangla to be written using a computer - Bangla keyboard, software for the background processing (the main programming), and fonts to display the characters.Ĭomputer keyboards inherited the QWERTY layout (placement of alphabets on keyboard) from typewriters, which were developed in 1874.

Rather, I share with you how few geniuses of our time are changing the way we write Bangla on our computers. This article however is not an effort to write that history.

Conversant persons should record that history for the new generations. LIKE many chapters of our national history, the amazing journey of digital Bangla - from English to Bangla computing - remains largely unknown. Published in the Daily Star on 28 April 2010

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