Swarachakra
Swarachakra is the most easy-to-use Indic script keyboard for touchscreens. Currently Swarachakra is available for twelve Indian Languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu). Swarachakra has been downloaded by more than 1,80,000 users from June 2013 to December 2014. The keyboard has received an average rating of 4.30/5 by over 7,500 users. Born out of about 12 years of research in usability of text input by Indian users, Swarachakra is designed, developed and maintained by a team of about 60 enthusiastic volunteers associated with the Industrial Design Centre in IIT Bombay. Typing with Swarachakra In Devanagari, one frequently needs to type a combination of a consonant (such as क, ख, घ, ग etc.) and a matra (such as ा, ि , ी, ु , ू etc.). When you tap on a consonant, a chakra (wheel) with combination of consonants and 10 frequent matras pops up. The chakra gives a preview of the possible character combinations. To select a combination, you slide your finger towards it. |
Prof. Anirudha Joshi
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Typing conjuncts like क्री, स्था, च्य is particularly hard in most Indian languages. But Swarachakra makes it easy. First tap on the first part of the combination and select the halant. Swarachakra then shows a preview of all possible conjuncts that begin with that consonant. If you also need to add a matra, select it from the chakra like earlier. Such as to write “स्था” in Marathi, first tap on the “स” (1), then select halant. Swarachakra shows a preview of all possible conjuncts that begin with “स”(such as स्क , स्ख , स्ग etc.) (2). Tap on “स्थ” a chakra(wheel) again with combination of 10 frequent matras will pops up(3), and then select “स्था”.
Whole vowels (आ, इ, ई, उ, ऊ etc.) and less frequently used characters (e.g. ऋ, ॉ etc.) appear in separate wheels. Numerals and rarely used characters appear on a shift.
Swarachakra – the complete keyboard
Swarachakra in each language has been specially designed by teams of experts who also happen to be native speakers of those respective languages. Thus, the design for Hindi and Marathi vary slightly from each other (though both languages use the Devanagari script), supporting users to type the nuanced differences of the two languages. Likewise, the design for Assamese and Bengali are different from each other. Punjabi and Tamil keyboards are substantially different from Hindi, Telugu, Kannada or Odia.
Swarachakra can be downloaded from http://idid.in/m
