This remington keyboard layout is brought to you by Tangere. This is a by-product of our deep engagement in e-learning in Hindi with one of our customers. We found out, that one of the main reason for non-participation in course forum for the learners was that they were not able to type as easily in Hindi as they would be able to do on their desktop computers. These learners were most adept in typing using Kruti Dev font or Dev Lys font for Devanagari.

We initially took the direction integrating various already existing converters but found multiple issues. Computer Implementations of Devanagari unicode typing is broadly compartmentalized today into 3 major buckets of typing methods

Transliteration applies best to those typist, who can express their thoughts in Hindi but have not learnt any Hindi keyboard layout.

Two popular solutions are from Google and Microsoft. In this method the user types phonetic Hindi in Roman script and when the word completes the system converts this into Unicode Hindi. If one doesn’t like the conversion, then one has to press a backspace at word end, and a drop down list of other possible options comes up from which one can choose an alternate transliteration.

While it is very often correct as it guesses the most common usage of phonetics, it many a times gives wrong suggestions with respect to matras or picks up one of the two possible ways of writing a word, while the user intends to use another. Once wrongly chosen it requires corrections.

One can read more details about Inscript Keyboard Layout here. This is a keyboard layout standardized by the Government of India (GoI), and has gone through some revisions based on evolution in Unicode standards. Inscript keyboard layout is somewhat popular with Hindi Journalists who are required to write blogs or articles on Internet. The reality however is that despite being a GoI standard, practically all the typing in government offices still happens using the Remington layout. It is extremely hard to change the typing habits of a natural typist. A similar attempt has been made in English keyboards when there were some suggestions made for people to move from Qwerty to Dvorak keyboard but Qwerty stays to be a very popular keyboard form

Remington keyboard layout is by far the most popular way of typing Devanagari script. This layout was made popular by the company with this name. They were the most popular manufacturers of Devangari typewriters in India. The keyboard layout has thus come to be known as Remington layout. Prior to dawn of Internet era, practically all the Hindi typist have been used to this keyboard layout.

There have been many attempts made to arrive at Unicode conversion of the Remington keyboard layout. However because of the way many characters combine in Devangari and it’s unicode interpretation, they all have deficiencies to the extent to render them non useful for fluent typewriting. This is a major gap between what people naturally prefer and how it is interpreted by the computer. The problem has been made grave by the fact that the standardization committees have chosen a different layout altogether and thus sidelined this large set of Hindi typing community. We also feel that this is by far the single most important reason for very limited usage of computers in internet era among Hindi community

Most of the Hindi typist know the remington style typing as Kruti Dev font as this font visually mimics the Devanagari remington keymap. However Kruti Dev as used in word processors like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer etc. internally still uses roman character set and is thus not unicode. At Tangere, we have appreciated these gaps and fixed multiple issues with respect to the Remington style Hindi typing. The trial pad on the website is a result of overcoming many such limitations and providing the most natural way of Unicode typing for all people adept with Remington style keyboards. For example, the typical problems associated with छोटी इ की मात्रा especially when associated with संयुक्ताक्षर have been resolved. We encourage the typists to use this pad frequently to type.

So Keep Typing !!

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