ShahidLipi: The forgotten tale of the first Bangla computer keyboard

The software that has undoubtedly made the Bangla language accessible on the internet is Avro. But the history of how Bangla emerged on digital platforms can be traced back to 'ShahidLipi'. Today, while everyone is familiar with Avro or Bijoy, this name remains unknown to many.

ShahidLipi was the first Bangla keyboard layout made for computers. In 1985, engineer Saifuddin Shahid, also known as Saif Shahid, created it for graphics-based Apple Macintosh computers while living in London.

Shahid was a mechanical engineering graduate of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and the managing director of Beximco Computers. Then he founded his own company in Dhaka called National Computers. ShahidLipi was marketed from this institution. Notably, he was also the first vice president of Bangladesh Computer Samity, the country's first IT business association.

ShahidLipi was the first Bangla keyboard layout made for computers. Photo: Courtesy

Shahid moved to the US in the '90s, which marked the end of ShahidLipi's journey. Aged 74, he breathed his last in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 9 January 2022.

ShahidLipi was a phonetic layout based on the QWERTY keyboard. The original layout contained approximately 182 letters and conjunct characters.

Later a Windows-based version was also released in the market. By 1988, most government and private organisations in Bangladesh were using ShahidLipi on their Bangla computer applications.

During his lifetime, Saif Shahid had said the name ShahidLipi was derived from the national language movement martyrs (known as Shaheed or Shahid in Bangla). However, the similarity with the author's name could be more than just a coincidence.

"In 1952, I was only four or five years old, so I have no clear memories of 21 February. However, as I grew older, I noticed that on that day, students walk barefoot early in the morning, carrying flowers, and march to the local Shaheed Minar. When I got a little older, I started joining them. There was a unique excitement in waking up on that cold morning and walking barefoot with everyone," Shahid wrote on Cadet College Blog.

"While studying at Faujdarhat Cadet College in Chattogram, I didn't have the opportunity to join processions, but I remember climbing the hill behind the college alone to pay my respects to the language martyrs," he added.

"From 1965 to 1969, during my four years as a student at BUET, I joined the morning processions of every Shaheed Dibosh and visited the Shaheed Minar. In my later years, as I became involved in student politics, the day became even busier.

"So, in 1985, when I sent my first letter in Bangla using a computer from London to my mother in Dhaka, only one name came to mind. That's why I named this effort 'ShahidLipi'," he wrote.

Before the arrival of Bijoy keyboard, ShahidLipi was quite popular. It gained significant attention after its emergence. Saif Shahid described the application in a BBC program. The then-leading Bangla national newspaper Daily Ittefaq ran a front-page story on ShahidLipi as well.

Initially, ShahidLipi used bitmap font technology, which was unsuitable for publishing work. Later, Saifuddin created a 'laser' font for ShahidLipi, enabling the publication of newspapers like Tarokalok and Daily Azad. 

Along with ShahidLipi, he also translated the user interface of the Macintosh operating system into Bangla, allowing users to see instructions in the language on their Mac screens.

In the 1980s, as graphical user interfaces and word processing emerged, several Bangla typing systems were created, mostly for Macintosh computers.

There were three main challenges in writing Bangla on a computer: a keyboard layout, software for processing, and fonts to display the characters.

Computer keyboards adopted the QWERTY layout from typewriters, which were invented back in 1874. So, instead of creating a completely new Bangla keyboard, the challenge was to decide where to place Bangla letters on an English keyboard.

In 1965, Munir Chowdhury created a Bangla layout for a typewriter's QWERTY keyboard to prevent type-bar jamming and improve typing speed. This was the first scientific Bangla layout, which was later used in computer keyboards.

However, for computers, a keyboard layout alone was not enough. We needed software to process the pressed Bangla-labeled keys and font sets to display the Bangla letters on the screen.

There were several individual efforts in the meantime, but ShahidLipi was the pioneer of first-generation Bangla solutions and the first complete Bangla computing interface.

Saif Shahid started working on this in 1983, and a complete Macintosh-based version was released in 1985. He introduced a set of Bangla fonts and also created a Bangla layout, which was different from the one developed by Munir Chowdhury.

The preface in the ShahidLipi manual shows that Saif Shahid had taken a conscious decision not to follow the existing Bangla typewriter keyboard. Instead he decided to follow a new keyboard which maintained similarities with existing QWERTY keyboards, thus making it easy for people used to that keyboard to switch easily to the Bangla ShahidLipi keyboard. 

Saif Shahid and his development team in Beximco Computers Limited developed several TrueType and screen fonts — namely Jessore, Dhaka, Faridpur, Bhola, Lalmonirhat, Meherpur, Zaipurhat, Chittagong, Sylhet, etc. Many later fonts marketed by other competitors have shown resemblance with these original ones.

Besides the Bangla fonts, the original ShahidLipi also completely localised the operating system in Bangla with all the alert messages and menu items converted to Bangla. This conversion was done long before any localisation kits were available in the market.

By the late 1990s, several second-generation Bangla solutions emerged in the market, with Bijoy, Proshika-Shobdo, and Proborton leading the way. While many of them offered unique keyboard layouts, several did not meet the necessary research standards required for Bangla key layouts.

However, ShahidLipi was somehow overshadowed by Bijoy during the decade until Avro finally took over the market in 2003.

Even Mustafa Jabbar, the creator of Bijoy Bangla Software, referred to Saifuddin Shahid as the pioneer of Bangla language's use in computers. "As long as Bangla is used in technology, Saif Shahid will remain a prominent figure. He was the trailblazer for the use of the Bangla language in computers," he told Prothom Alo.