Avro Keyboard is a free and open-source, graphical keyboard layout changer for the Microsoft Windows operating system, Ubuntu and other flavours of Linux. It is the first free Unicode- and ANSI-compliant Bengali keyboard interface for Windows.
Features
- Both Unicode and ANSI support: Avro keyboard supports writing Bengali text in both Unicode and ANSI.
- English to Bengali phonetic typing: If 'ami banglay gan gai' is typed then 'আমি বাংলায় গান গাই' will be written.
Avro Phonetic Keyboard Layout
- Traditional keyboard layout-based typing: Several keyboard layouts like Bornona, Avro easy, Jatiya, Probhat, Munir Optima can be used with Avro keyboard software.
- Mouse-based Bengali typing: Typing can be done by clicking the character symbols on the keyboard layout picture.
- Spell Check on the fly: For phonetic typing, Avro
keyboard provides a list of correct word on the fly from dictionary
based on the typing. Correct word can be chosen from the list.
- Spell checker program: Avro provided a spell checker as separate program. There is a spell checker plug-in for Microsoft Word.
- Input language/input locale support: If the Bengali language support is absent in the operating system even then Bengali script can be written by installing Avro.
- Customizable mode-switching (single key/key combination): Single key or multiple key combination can be used to switch between languages.
- Automatic keyboard mode and input language tracking:
If Bengali and English are being typed in two different programs then
Avro can detect the language and can continue typing in the correct
language.
- Key layout viewer on the fly: A keyboard layout image can be seen on the screen for typing help.
- Customizing Keyboard layout: New Keyboard layout can
be created or the character settlement of existing keyboard keys can be
rearranged by using the Avro keyboard layout changer which can be
distributed and adopted like plugins.
- Unicode and ANSI based fonts availability: Avro supports and provides Bengali Unicode and ANSI standard fonts.
- User editable dictionary support for phonetic typing:
There is a Bengali dictionary in Avro keyboard for automatic correction.
The editions of two auto correct dictionaries of different computers
can be merged.
- Keyboard macro support: Multiple key can be combined to write custom word or sentence as a command.
- Unicode to Bijoy converter: There is a program called Unicode to Bijoy converter to convert Unicode Bengali text to ASCII (or Bijoy) standard.
- Avro Converter: Avro converter can convert ASCII/ANSI
based Bangla documents written by Bijoy, Alpona, Proshika Shabda and
Proborton formats to Unicode, without losing formatting. Avro Converter
supports a variety of document types (*.txt, *.rft, *.doc, *.docx,
*.mdb) conversion by OLE Automation method. With development focus
solely on Avro Keyboard, OmicronLab has discontinued further development
of Avro Converter.
- Support forum for products: There is an online forum
from the OmicronLab accompanied with homepage to help the user of their
products and discuss various issues. This forum is also used for feature
suggestion and further development.
Awards and recognition
- Certified as a 100% clean from spyware/adware/virus on softpedia.
- Has been added to the online solution directory of Microsoft for Indic language input.
- Avro Keyboard has been listed as useful Bengali computing resource by the Unicode consortium.
- Bangladesh Election Commission used Avro for internal use and found it satisfactory.
- Recommended to Bengali Wikipedia users.
- Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services has
given the 'Special Contribution to IT Award 2011' to Avro team for Avro
Keyboard Software on 4 February 2011.
