Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC), a 14-year-old free software language technology collective, has released an Android keyboard that supports 23 languages, including Malayalam.
The virtual keyboard has been launched as part of the Indic Project of the SMC, which provides support for desktop, Web, and mobile phones in various Indian languages.
The endeavour has been supported by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous institution under the State government.
“Mobile phones have emerged as the most popular computing device in the history of technology. As mobile phones reach a vast majority of citizens, it is important to provide tools that allow using languages of their choice.
The Indic keyboard project is an essential toolkit that will be immensely useful to users,” said Satish Babu, Director, ICFOSS, on Tuesday.
Licence
He added that the toolkit had been made available with a licence that permitted users to improve the application further.
English, Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Telugu, and Assamese are among the languages supported and Arabic, Burmese, Mon, Nepali, and Sinhala are the non-Indian languages in the group.
According to Indic Project executive director Anivar Aravind, there is need for greater government support for developing such software. Some of the other features of the virtual keyboard include provision for transliteration, Malayalam input for all applications, including e-mail and SMS; integrated dictionary; and intelligent suggestions to make typing easier. The keyboard can be downloaded from the Android Play Store http://j.mp.indicmal and the software repository https://gitlab.com/smc/indic-keyboard.
