Avro Keyboard is a free and open source graphical keyboard software developed by OmicronLab for the Microsoft Windows, Linux, MacOS, and several other software additionally adapted its phonetic layout for Android and iOS operating system. It is the first free Unicode and ANSI compliant Bengali keyboard interface for Windows. It was published on 26 March 2003. Avro Keyboard has support for fixed keyboard layout and phonetic layout named "Avro Phonetic" that allows typing Bengali through romanized transliteration. Avro Keyboard comes with many additional features; auto correction, spell checker, a font fixer tool to set default Bengali font, a keyboard layout editor, Unicode to ANSI converter, ANSI to Unicode converter and a set of Bengali Unicode and ANSI fonts. This software is provided in a Standard Installer Edition and Portable Edition for Windows.

Development

Development of Avro Keyboard was started in 2003 by Mehdi Hasan Khan, a student from Mymensingh Medical College. It was first published on web for free download on 26 March 2003 under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Initially, it was developed in Visual Basic, which was later transferred to Delphi. After discussion, OmicronLab published the source code of Windows version under MPL 1.1 license with the Avro Keyboard 5.0.5 public beta 1. Initially, the Linux version of it, v0.0.1, was written in C++, using scim, licensed under GPLv2 on 2 September 2009. Later, it moved to iBus and JavaScript for its Linux version, first release on 20 July 2012, under MPL. Avro was further developed primarily by Sarim Khan along with Rifat Un Nabi, Tanbin Islam Siyam, Ryan Kamal, Shabab Mustafa and Nipon Haque from OmicronLab. Currently, the JavaScript version is frozen, porting is under way to Golang, intended to be released in next major release. The macOS version, written in Objective-C, was released on 15 December 2013. Several language implementation and bindings are maintained officially. A web-based version is under development.

Features

Avro Keyboard has customizable mode switching with automatic tracking and has a larger field of compatibility. Users can get all popular Bengali typing methods in a single software. Other features include:

Portable edition of Avro Keyboard

A portable edition of the Avro keyboard for Windows has been released on 2 July 2007. It does not need any installation or access as administrator and suitable to carry in portable media (like USB drives). It has a built-in 'automatic virtual font installer'. The size of the portable edition is smaller than the standard edition.

Avro Phonetic Layout

Apart from providing traditional layouts, Avro developed a new layout which provides phonetic typing, that allows Roman transliteration to Bengali. In spite some criticism for letting typing in foreign alphabets, it acclaimed much popularity, specially among young generation. The layout is adopted by various other keyboard software including Ridmik keyboard (Android and iOS), Borno keyboard (Android and Windows), OpenBangla Keyboard (Linux) and others. It is also used by Universal Language Selector of Wiki projects for Bengali input. It was also used in Firefox OS for Bengali input, utilizing its JavaScript implementation, along with Probhat layout.

Awards and recognition

Conflict with Bijoy

Beginning

On 4 April 2010, Mustafa Jabbar, the proprietor of commercial and closed-source Bijoy software and CEO of Ananda Computers, said in an article in the daily Janakantha that hackers were responsible for spreading unlicensed copies of his Bijoy on the internet. He accused UNDP of helping these hackers. He further claimed that UNDP had remarkable influence for selecting Avro for the national ID database project of the Bangladesh Election Commission. Avro developers denied all allegations, and accused Jabbar of continuous harassment in different stages and media by calling them thieves and for that their petition was ignored there. They said that the developers behind Bengali computing happened to work under threat of legal persecution and law enforcing agencies. They indicated that Jabbar complained against Avro after losing around ৳50 million business in Bangladesh Election Commission that used free Avro software instead of commercial Bijoy in the national ID database project.

Reaction

Anger and protest have become apparent in Bangla blogosphere and Bangladeshi Facebook users for this accusation that Avro is a "pirated version" of 'Bijoy' and that the Avro team have been called "hackers". The Avro team was praised for saving around 50 million Bangladeshi taka of Bangladesh Election Commission.

Legal proceeding

There is a keyboard layout, named UniBijoy, which was supplied with Avro Keyboard 4.5.1. Jabbar filed an application of copyright violation to the Bangladesh Copyright Office on 25 April 2010, claiming that UniBijoy is a copy of Bijoy.

Settlement

A settlement was made between Khan and Jabbar in a formal meeting on 16 June 2010 in Bangladesh Computer Council office in Agargaon, Dhaka at presence of many IT experts. According to that, Khan removes the UniBijoy keyboard layout from Avro Keyboard software and Jabbar withdraws the allegation of copyright violation from Bangladesh copyright office by 20 August 2010. As a result, UniBijoy keyboard layout was removed from the Avro Keyboard version 4.5.2 which was released on 20 August 2010. Jabbar informed that the trial in copyright office is withheld and will be withdrawn. He congratulated Khan and said, "I am respectful to his creativity and expecting the development of Avro software."