The Avro story: Dream nears completion as Ekushey Padak beckons
Naming Avro also took a while, but finally stumbled upon the word Avro – meaning sky
For long, a whispered dream has been held dear: grander recognition for Avro Keyboard – free and open-source graphical keyboard software developed by OmicronLab – and the brains behind it.
Mehdi Hasan Khan was a higher secondary student back in 2003.
A passionate developer, he had been diligently working to meet a crisis: the lack of a Bangla-language friendly keyboard.
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Mehdi had started computer programming from the time he was in 9th grade in Dhaka's Ideal School and College, according to reports.
After passing secondary school in 2001, he was admitted to Notre Dame College.
The wiry boy with thick, square-framed glasses was smitten with programming. He would collect books, as many as he could on the topic.
He learned programming from different places, while continuing his academic studies.
The inspiration for the keyboard came during a visit to the Bangla Academy's Ekushey Book Fair in February 2003.
Speaking to Bangla daily Prothom Alo, he said at the fair he found a stall with a Bangla website.
The website used the Bangla language in unicode, named Unibangla.
The language, however, was for Linux.
Returning home, he thought of creating a Bangla language programme, a simplified version, by himself.
He began writing the Unicode-based Bangla software using Visual Basic - a popular programming language of the time that could work on Windows.
In less than a month, Mehedi presented the world with Avro on 26 March 2003.
Even then, it wasn't a polished product and Mehedi kept working on it.
Even when he was a student of Mymensingh Medical College, Mehedi made time to refine his creation.
When his friends heard of him developing the software, they asked him how much he would charge.
He is reported to have shocked them with his reply.
"It'll be free of course," he said.
Naming Avro also took a while, but finally stumbled upon the word Avro – meaning sky.
The use of Unicode and being free of charge meant sky was indeed the limit.
Mehedi launched OmicronLab.com from where anyone could download the Avro app.
The rest is history.
A forum was opened, an easy to type version was provided, more iterations were dropped and in the meantime, Mehedi stuck to his motto: "Let language be free".
Over the years, calls have grown to ensure Avro and its founder are recognised with the Ekushey Padak. This may just be the year.
