ICFOSS releases Indic language keyboards for Android

The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) released its Indic language keyboards for Android at the inaugural session of a two-day workshop on Free Mobile Platforms held here Tuesday.

The keyboard layout for Android was developed jointly by ICFOSS and Jishnu Mohan of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing -- a 13-year-old community that is working to produce local language technology for Indic languages-under the research and development programme of the Indian government's IT department.

The keyboard layout, which is freely downloadable from app repositories with the name "Indic Keyboard", provides support to input text any android device in 15 languages and 35 keyboard layouts, consisting of most official Indian languages as well as Sinhalese and Nepali.

The two-day workshop brought together about 100 developers, students and professionals in the domains of mobile computing and language localization that highlighted the emerging free technological developments-particularly, free/open mobile platforms and localization tools-in the domain of mobile and tablet computing.

B. Ramani, executive director, Centre for Development and Advance Computing (C-DAC) said today in India, about 904 million phones are in use, as against a population of 1,220 million.

"Given the availability of new mobile devices such as tablets, cameras, and wearable devices (such as watches), further growth is expected," said Ramani.