Bangla Computing

Ekushey Extended support for Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 3 and Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Recently Microsoft release Service Pack 3 for Windows XP and a new Server Operating System Windows Server 2008. Now Windows XP with Service Pack 3 and Windows Server 2008 users can use Ekushey Typing Managers for their operating system without any hassle as Ekushey has extended the platform support.

By this time Ekushey is working on making one single installer for each keyboard layouts. For example now if you want to use UniJoy, you have to choose the exact version of your operating system. Some people don't even know what OS or what Service pack they are using. So to ease the use we are working on a single installer system, which will detect your OS version and install the Typing manager.

So after we release one individual pack for individual layouts, you don't need to download the specific layout. Just download the installer of the layout you want to use and install without any hassle.

Till then, stay tuned!

The last release was a bit buggy so we fixed that today. There is another thing we have done. Users from around the world was sending us suggestion that we must keep the previous version with the latest one in parallel because lots of sites are using the legacy version of QWERTY Phonetic Bangla Layout and they don't want to use the latest Intelligent features.

So today we updated the Intelligent version and left the Legacy version in parallel. Thanks to all for your suggestion, support and feedback.

QWERTY Phonetic Bangla Layout updated with new intelligence implimentation. So now when you press and "kar" following another "kar" or "space" - it will display the vowel itself, not the kar. For example check the following sequence:
a = আ (previously it display া ) and
kha = খা
khai = খাই (previously displayed খাি)

Now "=" also works as a joiner and "==" displays the "="

The new version is available from here, which is a part of Bangla Typing Scripts for Web Pages.

As we know that today is the Republic Day of India and on this eve we present a very special gift to our Indian friends. We released Inscript Bangla layout script for web usages. The best thing of India is, they only use one single layout for all of their languages. Inscript is their official layout and the use only this layout for any Indian language input (for example Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi etc.)

We made a web version of the Bangla part and this could be a milestone for other Indian languages. Anyone can download and modify the simple JavaScript to meet their needs. Click here to take a ride of the Inscript Bangla layout script, which is a part of our Bangla Typing Scripts for Web Pages project.

Here is a good news. We have updated the typing scripts for Wordpress and Web Pages. Most of us know that we have some issue with Ra-Japhola. Most of the people don't even don't know what the issue is and how to solve that. So this time the computer will take care of that. That means the scripts will detect what you are typing and it will fix the problem. So with from now Bangla Typing Scripts doesn't need any special attention (for the layout Unijoy, QWERTY Phonetic and Probhat), Just type Ra and Japhola, it will take care of the rest.

By the way, if you see it's not working, then you need to update your OS or your browser. Firefox 2 on Linux and IE7 on Windows works okey.

We are happy to let you know that Bangla Typing Scripts 2.0 for Wordpress is just released. The change is not major, but it enables support for Probhat keyboard layout users.

We have developed Bangla Typing Scripts for web sites. Our developed Java Script based add-ons will let your visitors type in Bangla without using any 3rd party tool or keyboard manager. These add-ons are very flexible and easy to install to any site and 100% workable with Mozilla FireFox (1.0 or higher), Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer (5 or higher) and any Gecko engine based web browser.

Currently 3 layouts have been developed for WordPress and they are in mature status.

We are proud to announce that the Bangla Typing Scripts is independent project now. 2 years ago our contributor Hasin Hayder developed the first JavaScript for web pages. Which allows one to type Bangla on web pages without using any 3rd party software. Later he made a plug-in for WordPress, and WordPress users can type Bangla on their site without using any software.

Many web sites adopted the solution, for example the best Bangla blogging site Somewherein Blog also popular sites like Projonmo Forum, Amader Projukti etc. Many WordPress users adopted the solution for making Bangla post and allow users to post comment on their site in Bangla, which have been added later by our contributor Lavlu. Looking at the progress and popularity, we are making Bangla Typing Scripts an independent project.

From now interested people for Bangla Typing Scripts will find the solution directly from our left main menu. :) We are working on more on the project to add more layouts. Our future plan is to make a Bangla supported WYSIWYG editor (no we are not making one, we will add support for Bangla script on existing popular editors like TinyMCE and FCKEditor). Thanks for being with us.

Yet Another JAVA based Bangla Word Processor release by Ekushey. Our fresh contributor Rezwan Salam Tanvir developed this Java based Word Processor called T-Bangla Word Processor. It has some nice feature and one should give it a try. This is available from here.

Due to Ankur's effort, Probhat layout comes in-built with any popular linux distribution. People likes to use the same thing on any platform and those users who usages Windows and Linux in parallel, Probhat is a big choice for them.

As Probhat is getting popular day by day, looking at it's popularity Sabuj Kundu developed the web version of this layout, which is inspired by Hasin Hayder's Unijoy and QWERTY Phonetic layout. Web developers now can include this engineering on their site and visitors can easily type Bangla with Probhat layout without using any 3rd party software. For more detail have a look at our Bangla IME for Web project page.

The official Inscript Bangla layout from Microsoft is very very un-friendly. So we tried to ease Bangla typing with that layout and delivering the layout with updated options. Now many of our users demanded for providing Ya (ontostiyo) with a single key-press and we updated that according to user request.

Interested users are requested to un-install the old one, download and install the new one from here...

To Ease Bangla typing with Probhat layout, Ankur decided to made some little changes on the layout. Two days ago they officially released the final version of Probhat layout and we also have updated that as per their new instructions.

Users of Probhat layout are requested to un-install the old one from their computer and install the new one from here...

SolaimanLipi, the most used font in Bangla Computing History. After Rupali, we found some incompatibility with SolaimanLipi font on Windows Vista. We fixed them and now we believe there won't be any problem with any Operating System.

You can download the font from here.

If you still face any problem, please contact with us.

You own a Bangla Web Site? Your visitors wants to write comment in your site in Bangla? Your visitors doesn't have any Bangla typing software installed but want to comment on your blog?

Ekushey brings you real time typing solution for web sites. Web site owners now can add the Ekushey Bangla IME for Web Page solutions to their web site and let the visitor type in Bangla without using any 3rd pary software or keyboard manager. We also developed one WordPress plugin for WordPress bloggers. For more detail visit the project home page.

Happy Bangla New Year to all.

Today we released a Hinted a Bangla font. The benefit of this font is clearness. If you visit Mukto or Omi's blog with Microsoft Internet explorer, you can understand what Hint mean. Long ago Alamigr Mohammed (From Joomla BD) and Ershadul Haq started working on this font and finished hinting. After doing internal tests, we are releasing it to public and also as a NoboBorsha Gift. Webmasters can use the font for their web sites using Microsoft's WEFT technology. The font is available for download from here.

We also presenting new version of Mukti font. You can download it from here.

Hello Visitors,
We are having huge problem with SF.Net web hosting. It's a good service for ordinary static sites, but not for huge CMS based dynamic sites. We don't know why they made all these sick policies, but what they are doing is not positive for us. We had problem in the past hosting our concern site http://www.mukto.org and now we are having problem.

We talked with phpXperts and they agree to host our site, soon we'll switch web hosting to their server but the files will be in sf.net servers for faster mirror access from around the world.

For the time being, if you see any message like "FATAL ERROR" please refresh your browser and you'll see the page. So please bare with us till we change hosting.

We wanted to make a dynamic site from a long time. But could not find any good web content management system. Last month our developer Hasin Hayder suggest for Jaws and we found an excillent CMS for our site. This is what we ware looking for.

The site you are looking at now, is made by Jaws. We must thank to the Jaws Project developers for making this excillent CMS.

We wanted to present the new site to the Bangla speaking community on 21 Feb 2007, but due to some problem with SF.Net we could not upload that right on time.

Note: As we completely removed the old site, you may experiance changes to your bookmarks. So please updated your bookmarks. Webmasters are requested to change the hotlinks to our site also, as the old hotlinks will not work anymore...

We found some issues with Rupali on Windows Vista. After investigating we understand that our font architecture was little bit faulty. Most of the conjuncts ware not working. It took long to understand the problem as it was working fine on Linux/Windows 2000/Windows XP/Windows 2003.

But finally Peter Constable from Microsoft helped us and suggest the update. So everything is perfect now and you can use the font without any problem.

Still if you see/face any problem. Please inform us.

Once again we proved ourselves as the Pioneer of Bangla Language. Windows Vista came this month and our Bangla Computing solutions are ready for Microsoft Windows Vista.

We re-compiled all our Unicode Bangla Keyboard Layout Managers for Windows Vista x86 (32bit versions) and now any Windows Vista user can download and use our solution.

Due to some in-compatibility, we could not compile our Bangla Keyboard Layout Managers for Windows Vista x64 (64bit versions) yet. But we believe we will presents solution for that x64 versions very soon.

Hello Ekushey Users,
Recently we discovered some technology and found them really useful. We tried a lot to make a font looks better. But there is always some lacking with technology.

This time we found some good way to render a font with better Look & Feel. You can download and check the new Rupali font and then you’ll understand what we are saying.

Bangla web site developers can use this font with font embedding technology and use it on their website. This font will present a clear text output on the web and daily desktop usages.

Download the font from here.

Bangladesh Government is too lazy to make their site well enough to read. Many of them are too old and many of them have no knowledge of latest technology. But we are happy to let you know that recently Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board are using Unicode Bangla for their site. Not only Unicode Bangla, but also Ekushey solutions. They are encouraging people to use SolaimanLipi font.

ThankYou! BTTB for understanding the future of Bangla Computing!

It’s being a pleasure for us to introduce Mac OS X with Unicode Based Bangla solutions. Mac used had many Bangla typing solutions before. But as you know typing and computing is not same thing. We are pioneer for Windows, Linux Unicode Bangla typing and computing solutions as well and now we released them for OS X.

We think Bangla speaking people around the world who like to see their language on a Mac PC, this is the perfect universal solution. It would be helpful to them also who are afraid of a Mac PC because they afraid they cannot use their language on a Mac and never looked for it. Now we think we’ve changed the whole vision and anyone us free to use Bangla language anywhere.

Be with us, because your company is only what we need.!

Our Designer + Open Type font developer made Rupali 4 years ago. It was unique of it’s kind. But more quality demand came from the users time to time and we felt we should deliver our best to the community.

So here we come with our best (so far) solution and Rupali is now decorated with High Quality glyphs. Still the font is not hinted, cause we don’t feel we should spend so much time behind hinting and make the font look good in small point of size. If you cannot see the font clearly in smaller sizes, it’s Microsoft’s fault not our’s. The same font looks great in Linux. So.... :)

Also there is a big change in the licensing. We ware using GPL public license for distributing fonts. But the GPL license for font is controversial. So we decided to use something better and not GPL also not controversial. So from now on all fonts will be released under OFL. Open Font License. You can learn more about OFL from here.

You can download the newer version from here.

From a long time Ekushey member Raiyan Kabir is doing huge research on Mac port of Bangla Unicode. Apple Inc. is also very helpful regarding the development and with the help of Apple, he did huge success on Ekushey Unicode Bangla solutions for Mac OS X.

The release is in final stage but we have to do some more Research and Development before we release it to public. So Mac users, you don’t need to be upset any more, you are going to have Mac version of Ekushey Unicode solutions very soon.

The release will be available from here.

Munir Layout users can easily learn and use the Unicode version.

Lots of Bangla speaking people around the world learned typing on a typewriter. It’s really hard to believe that typewrite can print all the conjuncts we need for our script. The widest typewriter layout was Munir Optima layout.

Later someone designed a software, which can let those typists to use that layout in computer for the hacked ASCII Bangla fonts. But no one did any research on making the layout Unicode compatible.

Ekushey team did some research and made this happen. It was tough but not impossible. Due to Unicode standards, we had to do some improvements to the layout, but it’s very minor and now Munir users can easily learn it and use it for their Unicode inputs.

The layout manager is free to download from here.

Ekushey.Org is working with Mozilla Foundation from a long time. Due to some problems with Bangla Language script support Ekushey could not make any release of Mozilla products.

But later Jamil Ahmed from Ankur raised his hands and find some hacked ways of Bangla translation of Mozilla products. So in the release sequel this is the second part.

More information about this can be found from here.

We changed the look and feel of the web site. The old site was 3.5 years old :)

The core site was designed by Dr. Robin Upton on 25 September 2001. Later Omi Azad joined Altruists International as web developer but didn’t changed the look of the old site because it was easy to manage.

But the cyber whole world is changing it’s look and feel and Ekushey members decided to change Ekushey.Org’s look also. So this is the site in front of you….

All Layouts are now compiled with Bengali Locale. Current users will not face any change or no need to update their layouts. Upcoming Windows Vista users will need this, because Windows Vista will respect Bangla Locale.

When the layout managers ware made, there was no support for Bangla locale in .Net Framework. So the layouts ware compiled with Sanskrit locale.

Windows XP/2000/2003 (any version) users cannot feel the changes, but this had to be done for upcoming Windows Vista users, else they may face problem installing and using the layout managers.

Next time Ekushey will release separate installers for Bangladeshi and Indian users. Bengali Speaking people people staying rest of the world can use anyone of their choice.

Download Ekushey Bangla Typing Managers from : http://www.ekushey.org/index.php/page/shadhinota

Ekushey team members successfully completed Google main site translated. Omi Azad one of the founder of Ekushey did all the reviews of the translation and requested Google Translation engineers to make this live. On a reply Google Translation engineer said it may take one more week to become public.

Google site (http://www.google.com.bd http://www.google.co.in/bn or http://www.google.com/intl/bn/) was in Bangla already, but not in Bangla script. People used Latin (English) script for Bangla display.

Ekushey members Changed all that and the site should appear in 100% Bangla after Google makes the translation Live. Ekushey members also wants to thank those who took part before in Google Bengali Translation and did the translation with Latin script. The Latin script translation helped the translator a lot and made the job faster.