Avro Keyboard

Development of Avro Keyboard was started in 2003 by Mehdi Hasan Khan, a student from Mymensingh Medical College. It was first published on the web for free download on 26 March 2003 under the 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 released 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, which is intended to be released in the 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 also available. == Features ==

Portable edition of Avro Keyboard A portable edition of the Avro Keyboard for Windows was released on 2 July 2007. It does not need any installation or access as administrator and is suitable to carry on 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, particularly among the younger generations. The layout is adopted by various other keyboard software including the Ridmik Keyboard (Android and iOS), Borno Keyboard (Android and Windows), OpenBangla Keyboard (Linux) and others. It is also used by theUniversal Language Selector of Wiki projects for Bengali input. It was also used in Firefox OS for Bengali input, utilizing its JavaScript implementation, along with the Probhat layout. == Awards and recognition ==

giving Ekushey Padak 2025 to Avro Keyboard Team. • In 2025, its inventor, Mehdi Hasan Khan and three others, got the second-highest civilian award of Bangladesh, the Ekushey Padak for inventing this software. • Was added to the online solution directory of Microsoft for Indic language input. • Avro Keyboard was listed as useful Bengali computing resource by the Unicode Consortium. • The Bangladesh Election Commission used Avro for internal use and found it satisfactory. • Added as a built-in keyboard in Bengali Wikipedia. • Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services gave the 'Special Contribution to IT Award 2011' to the Avro team for Avro Keyboard Software on 4 February 2011. ==Conflict with Bijoy==

Beginning On 4 April 2010, Mustafa Jabbar, the proprietor of the commercial and closed-source Bijoy software and CEO of Ananda Computers, said in an article on the daily Janakantha that hackers were responsible for spreading unlicensed copies of Bijoy on the internet. He accused the UNDP of helping these alleged hackers. He further claimed that the UNDP had influence on 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. They also accused Jabbar of calling them thieves and for that their petition was ignored in the media. They said that the developers behind Bengali computing happened to work under threat of legal persecution from law enforcement agencies. They also claimed that Jabbar only complained against Avro because he lost around 50 million taka in business from the Bangladesh Election Commission that used the free Avro software instead of the commercial Bijoy software in the national ID database project. Reaction In the Bangla blogosphere and Bangladeshi Facebook, people were angered and protested following the claims that Avro was a pirated version of Bijoy and that the Avro team were being called "hackers". The Avro team was praised for saving around 50 million taka for the Bangladesh Election Commission. Settlement A settlement was made between Khan and Jabbar in a formal meeting on 16 June 2010 in a Bangladesh Computer Council office in Agargaon, Dhaka in the presence of many IT experts. According to the settlement, Khan agreed to remove the UniBijoy Keyboard layout from the Avro Keyboard software and Jabbar agreed to withdraw the allegations of copyright violation from the Bangladesh Copyright Office before 20 August 2010. As a result, the 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 the copyright office was withheld and would be withdrawn. He congratulated Khan and said, "Mehdi Hasan Khan has withdrawn Unibijoy from Avro, so I congratulate him for that. I respect his creativity. It is my wish that the Avro software further improves." ==References==