Keywords: Bangla Keyboard, Bengali Keyboard, Baishakhi, Baishakhi Inscript, Webel, Top-Type, Uni- Gitanjali

In order to facilitate data and document entry in Bangla, a number of keyboard layouts have been designed and implemented to suit the needs of different people habituated with different typing practices. The suite of such keyboards is being increasingly upgraded. The salient feature of all these keyboards is that they are all Unicode 6.1 compatible and hence any document entered through them is acceptable across any standard platform and can be visualized through any Unicode compliant Bangla fonts. SNLTR has designed a new Bangla keyboard named “Baishakhi Keyboard”, which has a 3-layer keyboard structure, with Normal, Shift and Right Alt modes, designed to accommodate all the Bangla alphabetical signs and symbols. ”. The keyboard layout is mostly phonetic in nature.

SNLTR has also customized two other popular keyboard layouts- Inscript and Gitanjali to make them fully UNICODE 6.1 compatible and named them as ‘Baishakhi Inscript’ and ‘Uni- Gitanjali’.

In order to conform with the existing practice of the government employees, another keyboard layout, named "Webel" has also been designed. This retains the existing "Webel" layout as used by the employees with the minor modifications as required for making it Unicode compliant.

Baishakhi keyboard has been successfully used in preparing the following online literary resources: Rabindra Rachanabali, Sarat Rachanasamagra, Bankim Rachanabali, Cinema-script of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Vivekananda Rachanabali.

Various government departments are also using Baishakhi Keyboards successfully.