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A virtual keyboard for typing in the Bangla language on Windows, Linux and Ubuntu devices

A virtual keyboard for typing in the Bangla language on Windows, Linux and Ubuntu devices

Vote: (42 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Omicron Lab

Version: 5.6.0

Works under: Windows

Vote:

Program license

(42 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

Omicron Lab

5.6.0

Works under:

Windows

Pros

  • ANSI compliance
  • Unicode compliance
  • Built-in spell checker

Cons

  • Unoptimized suggestion feature

Avro Keyboard is a fully compliant Bengali keyboard for Windows.

Bengali—or Bangla as it is often called—is not a well-supported language in the personal computing domain, and Avro Keyboard is a freeware program for Windows as well as Ubuntu and other Linux distributions that seeks to make typing in this language on a computer a bit easier for people.

This is a virtual keyboard that is both ANSI-compliant and Unicode-compliant. It supports phonetic typing from English to Bangla, including most of the phonetic typing methods that are still in use today for this conversion. It also has a full Bangla keyboard that can be used as well. You can also choose your preferred layout from options like Bornona, Munir Optima and Probhat.

The built-in word list has about 150,000 words by default. The program will use these words to automatically correct spelling errors or make recommendations. The Bangla dictionary is fully editable, so you can add you own words to it. Additionally, there are some online communities that maintain large dictionaries that you can just download and drop into the program folder for use.

The developer designed the user interface to be usable for the Bangla user who had never used a computer before. It is well-designed in that regard but not so simple that the more experienced user will find inflexible or otherwise lacking. Avro Keyboard can reside in your system or serve as a floating window that you can use alongside your text editor or other program of choice.

The floating window provides a preview so that you see what you are typing before committing to it. You can also activate all of these features through hotkeys that are defined by default but also editable Compatibility with all other system languages has been added as well. This support includes both U.S. and U.K. English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Hindi and much more, and no restart is ever required.

Avro Keyboard has also introduced word suggestions as you type. In theory, this works just like the query suggestions that Google makes but in Bangla. When it works well, it speeds up typing quite a bit and helps to overcome the limitations associated with virtual keyboards.

Word recommendations don’t always work as well as they should, unfortunately. As of this writing, the word retrieval mechanism is a bit sluggish and having a large word database will exacerbate this. It actually slows the program at times and even causes some stability issues, but you can disable it.

Pros

  • ANSI compliance
  • Unicode compliance
  • Built-in spell checker

Cons

  • Unoptimized suggestion feature