Bangla – Page 3 – Adnan's Den

Bangla Typing with Avro Keyboard

Avro Keyboard Startup Splash

Like the most of the Bangladeshi people, I don’t know the Bangla keyboard layouts. Because in Bangla scripts we’ve 11 vowels, 35 consonants, 5 modifiers and numerous consonant conjuncts. To make it more complex, there are several keyboard layouts which are differ from each other. It is a quite difficult matter for me to be handy with one of those keyboards. What a shame for me! Being a Bangladeshi I don’t know how to write Bangla in IT world! But that problem was pacified when I met with Avro Keyboard.

I received several questions from my known-circles about how a complete idiotic ignorant of Bangla Key-layouts like me writes in Bangla. Actually that’s why I must thank to Avro Keyboard. Because this keyboard supports English to Bangla phonetic typing method. That means if you write “amar sonar bangla.“ it’ll show “আমার সোনার বাংলা।“ automatically. Isn’t it fantastic! See a snap shot on how your English text is converting to Bangla using Avro Keyboard.

Avro Keyboard is a free software. Any one can download it. After installing it’ll be automatically stored in your system tray leaving a small toolbar on the top of your desktop. This toolbar indexes all the options for using the keyboard. This tool bar is also very stylish in outfits. Just look it at below.

Another exciting feature is that you can use mouse for typing Bangla like the Character Map of Windows OS. For the totally newbies (who even can’t use keyboard) this is a damn good option for writing in Bangla.

Now you all know my secret of writing Bangla in the Blogosphere or in Facebook or Orkut! But to use it on your browser first you need to set up your browser for Bangla Unicode. I prefer Firefox for that job. Read my guide for Firefox users to prepare Firefox for Bangla unicode.

Bangla Jokes

এই কৌতুক দুটো বাংলায লেখা। একবার ভেবেছিলাম এগুলো ইংলিশে ট্রান্সলেট করে দিই, কিন্তু পরমুহর্তেই মনে হল এইগুলো বাংলাতেই পরতে সবচেয়ে ভালো লাগছে, ইংলিশে ট্রান্সলেট করলে আবেদন নষ্ট হয়ে যাবে। তাই এই পোস্টটা বাংলাতেই করলাম।

চুট্‌কি # ১

প্রশ্ন: চাঁদে একজন রাজাকার। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: সমস্যা।

প্রশ্ন: চাঁদে দু’জন রাজাকার। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: মহা সমস্যা।

প্রশ্ন: গোটা রাজাকার সমাজ চাঁদে। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: পৃথিবীতে সমস্যার সমাধান!

চুট্‌কি #২

প্রশ্ন: রাজাকার আর এক বালতি গোবরের মধ্যে পার্থক্য কোথায়?

উত্তর: ঐ বালতিটা।

Bangla Unicode Fonts in Firefox 2.0

Update!

Just a several months back like many people, I used to browse the Bangla sites (specially the Bangla news papers) with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Because Firefox (FF) couldn’t handle the Bangla fonts. Bangla fonts appeared in the Firefox was scattered and broken. Though as a browser FF is always my first choice, for the Bangla sites I stucked on IE7. Recent days I am able to handle the Bangla sites with FF smoothly. But I am hearing many complains from various persons regard the problem I’ve faced earlier. For this purpose, I decided to write an article which will guide anyone to fix this problem. This article is going to guide you for setting up FF for viewing Bangla unicode fonts. For writing this article, I took help from Bokaader Poddyo.

Continue reading Bangla Unicode Fonts in Firefox 2.0

The Rain: a glimpse of past

When I am writing this post, there is a heavy rainfall outside my window. The cold soothing breeze is flooded into my room. This is not rainy season in Bangladesh. But rain in this time with rapid gusty winds or to be precisely storm is known as “KAALBOISHAKHI JHOR”. This is considered as the harbinger of Boishakh, the first month of Bangla new year. This stormy weather reminds me something very familiar which was in the past phase of my life.

For the first three years in IUT, my room was in 5th level (4th floor) which is the top most level in IUT. From our front balcony a clear view of surroundings is possible to enjoy as there is no high rise buildings outside IUT. Those storm mostly formed during the evening. When we sensed something stormy is going to formed, we all gathered in our balcony and raise our eyes to the south. We could clearly see the pitch black clouds coming toward us. All of a sudden a gusty wind began to blow and it really blew everything (dust, leaves etc) it got in front. And like a quick rider the pitch black clouds came with heavy rainfall. We were still on the balcony (though we were wet). All the environment become chilled with the rain drops. Sometimes there was ice-segment falling with rain. Have you ever taste it! It’s not have any special taste like sweet or sour, though it was fun. One of my roommates enjoyed to get shower in rain but wearing a raincoat!

Its just marvelous to see a storm forming in front of you! When I thought of those days, I really want to return in IUT. No one can ever tell how much IUT gave me, not even me! Just see the following picture that has been taken just after a heavy downfall. The red roads are sparkling and shinning just like mirrors. This is the front road of our dormitory (South Hall).

Ekushey Boi Mela 2008

Today I went to Bangla Academy Boimela. For the last two weeks I just sorted out a list of books that has to be bought from the fair. As usual my sister helped me in that case. I felt the same emotion that I felt every year in boimela when I entered the entrance gate. All the publishing houses were colored with colorful covers of new as well as old books. It was just like a festival, a festival of books. All the renowned publishing houses were crowded with people as they publishes most of the books written by popular writers. I am one of the fan of Muhammad Zafar Iqbal. And as usual I bought his latest sci-fi and teen-adventure books. I’ve been searching for some old but appealing books that I’ve searched in many places. This time in Bishwashahittya Kendro, I got three of them. These are “Jokey’r Dhon” by Hemendra, “Chadey’r Pahaar” by Bivutybhushon and a story collection of Porshuram.

Unlike other years, Dipu was not with me this year in Boi Mela. Last several years, we just spent hours after hours in Boimela by just comparing the books. Dipu has a good taste in transliterated books. Some times we just bought books by seeing it’s front and rear cover. If we didn’t like the book then we just blaming the author for such a book 🙂 !

I was disappointed by the UNMAD stall. UNMAD is a cartoon magazine like MAD. Every year they brought some really hilarious funny posters and stickers which were sold like hot cakes. But today I didn’t find anything like that in their stall except some copies of their magazine issues.

What ever, I don’t have so much time to write this post, because more than fifteen fresh books are waiting for me. And I can assure that for a few dayz, I’ll not be available in my blog for the same purpose. 🙂

Another February… Another Bookfair

Another February has come which announces the glorious history of our beloved mother tongue Bangla. Who can live without speaking in his mother language? Nobody. And we are the only nation who sacrificed to gain the right of speaking in Bangla. Rafiq, Salam, Jabbar, Barkat, Shafiur and many unknown sacrificed their lives on 21 February in 1952 as the law enforcers fired on processions demanding recognition of Bangla as one of the state languages. In 1997, the UN declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day.

Click here to know more about 21st February and Bangla Language.

Another magnificent event of this month is the book fair which is widely known as “Omor Ekushey Boimela”. Bangla Academy has been organizing this book fair since 1972. For the whole February, this fair will be the common place for the writers and readers. Releasing new books and seminars on Bangla language is the common everyday event in the fair. Besides the seminars where keynote papers are presented and the Bangla Academy awards are distributed, the academy also organizes cultural programs and discussions every afternoon during the fair. The programs include musical and dance performances along with other forms of stage shows. But the main attraction is still the books, the fresh new books.

I always await for this book fair. Though I can buy book from nearby book shops, but I await the whole year for buying books from this fair. You can’t describe the fair scenario, it’s just great. People are crowded in the stalls, seeking favorite books, writers are busy with giving autographs on their newly released books, books are every where, the air is smelled with the scent of newly printed books. Last several years, in book fair, my closest friend Dipu was with me every time. But this time he is away from Bangladesh. Don’t know how I’ll enjoy book fair this time without him!

Hope like every year people will gather in book fair to celebrate the glorious 21st February. Proud to speak in Bangla.

Voter List is in Web

For the first time Bangladesh Election Commission has published a web site containing the complete list of all voters of the country. Any one can access the site through internet. To access the information one has to provide the 17 digits PIN (printed in the back of the slip which was given after taking photograph), birth information (format has been given) and a verification code (printed on below). Take a look on the screen shot I’ve given below.

Main disappointment is there is no link of this site in the Bangladesh Election Commission’s website. As BEC is manipulating this process it is common sense that there should be a link to the Voter List site. Another drawback is that if any information is incorrect then there is no option to make it correct, except a text field which is used for Comments purpose. Probably they put the box to get message from the user for any inconvenience or mistakes. In my case, I saw some severe mistakes and I used the Comment Box to send them feedback about the mistakes. But it has been more than 10 days that I saw the informations were unmodified. I still don’t know how to resolve this.

The bright side is, the whole site is build in Bangla Language. So people will feel comfort to use the site. They also provide the Bangla font that will be required to view the page. Overall Bangladesh is advanced to the recent technical world another step. Hope the site developers will take necessary steps to make the site more matured by giving the users option to make correction in their information. Whatever this is, it is indeed a great job!