Language keyboards in for a change

Swati Shinde, Pune
The Times of India
Computer keyboards in Indian languages are in for an overhaul with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), along with Microsoft and two other major companies, revamping the old version and bringing about a standardisation of keyboards in the market.

Language keyboards, which were updated to Indian Script (Inscript) in 1991, will be available in 22 Indian languages in Unicode (a character set that encompasses all languages in the world) format. These keyboards are largely used by the publishing industry and for e-governance applications.

Mahesh Kulkarni, programme co-ordinator, Graphics and Intelligence-cased Script Technology (GIST), C-DAC, said: "With the advent of Unicode, a few new characters were added to each language. Hence, there was a need to enhance the existing keyboard when GIST involved Microsoft, IBM and Red Hat to device a common and uniform layout for keyboards."

The modified keyboards will have the same layout of the existing ones and it will be compatible with all operating systems.