[Project-ideas] Bengali Keyboard layout for Android [was:Re: Gsoc 2012]

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Yash Shah <blazonware at gmail.com> wrote:

> According to me, The proposal aims at creating a keyboard layout for easy
> and efficient entry of Bengali text on Android mobile devices which supports
> Indic languages. We have to develop the user's most preferred layout by
> taking feedback from the users.
> Please correct me if I may be wrong at understanding. I have limited
> knowledge of keyboard layouts, But i would love learning about them. To be
> True, I have not worked on keyboard layouts before but i am very much
> interested in learning/working on it.
>
> Although there are a large number of different keyboard layouts used for
> different languages, QWERTY would be more preferable.
> It is most widespread layout in use, and the only one that is not confined
> to a particular geographical area.

Fair enough. Here's what I had responded to a similar query earlier.

The idea originated from the fact that with
the ICS release of Android, Indic languages are supported out of the
box. And yet, there aren't many keyboard layouts which take advantage
of the screen real estate and also make input easy. A layout per se
would be multi-platform ie. I'd love to see that included in various
Linux distributions as well. However, the project would consider the
availability on Android handsets and slates/tablets as a measure of
success.

I'd also like to point out that this is the time when you should also
be looking at the available keyboard layouts for Bengali and input
method on Android along with the commonly used keyboard layouts from
those available on other operating systems. This would allow you to
think along the times of contrasting your idea with those available in
order to come up with optimization solutions. Bengali and other Indian
languages have a finite, if lengthy, set of valid conjuncts and you'd
need to factor that in as well.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/>