BHUBANESWAR: To make typing in Odia easier and tide over the problems in the existing linguistic software tools, the State government has come out with its own unicode phonetic software called ‘Ama Lipi’.The software has been prepared by the city-based Institute of Odia Studies and Research.
Member secretary of the institute Subrat Prusty said the software has already received IT clearance from the government and is currently being put to test by different departments. This is the first Unicode Odia phonetic software that makes it easy to type error-free Odia words in less time.
“The widely-used Odia ‘matras’, systematic decoration of ‘phalas’ and conjuncts have not been applied to any Odia input solution developed so far other than Ama Lipi. It is very difficult to write all alphabets and symbols in all the Odia typing tools created so far including Akruti and Shreelipi. Keeping this difficulty in mind, the Odia letter buttons have been properly positioned for writing very simply in the Ama Lipi keyboard.
What further makes the typing tool unique is that a person with no idea of Odia keyboard can also type Odia characters, conjuncts and ‘matras’ without having to learn them.He explained that a probable word list (predictive list) also appears on the computer screen while writing words using the Ama Lipi tool. “A character map has been included in the software which makes selection of Odia numerals, ‘matras’, ‘phalas’, conjuncts and other symbols easier,” he said.
Since the software has been locally developed, it can be modified as per the state government’s requirement. In the next phase, the institute would develop a feature for converting Odia speech to text.
“We are also working with the government to provide them 2,000 best quality Odia fonts to stop piracy and discourage the imbalanced and inconsistent looking characters-based fonts,” Prusty said.
The Ama Lipi software currently has 500 kinds of Odia fonts. In the Microsoft Indic language input tool, which is currently used to translate Odia to English, there is only one Odia font called ‘Kalinga’.
Recently, the errors and sentence structure of the Odia question paper for accountant recruitment by Odisha Staff Selection Commission had become a major embarrassment for the state government.