Hewlett-Packard (HP) today announced the Gesture-Based Keyboard (GKB), a pen-based technology that allows the Kannada(South Indian) script to be recorded and stored directly on the computer. HP's technology is intended to open up the power of computing to a vast number of new users, all in their own language and without prior knowledge of English or typing.

The gesture-based keyboard [GKB], developed by researchers at HP Labs India, also holds the potential for Indian languages derived from the

Devanagari and Tamil scripts to be used in a similar manner. It could benefit more than 1.5 billion non-English speaking people, including Nepalese, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and other phonetic script users.

According to company sources, unlike other prevailing Indian language entry methods which either use bilingual keyboards or display the Indian keyboard layout on a monitor, the HP GKB is solution that helps solve the phonetic language entry problem by allowing users to input data the way most people learn to write with a pen. Field tests conducted by HP Labs India researchers demonstrated that most people found it easy to use.

Ajay Gupta, director, HP Labs India, said, "In our country, from the 60 million people who can speak English, only less than 10 percent people can actually do transactions in English. The PC literacy in our country is estimated to be 54 million, and our goal is to break the co-relation between English knowledge and PC literacy. Our goal is to create innovation that counts both for HP and customers."

"The idea behind this new technology is 'IT in our mother tongue'. Indian language has phonetic script, which means there is a basic structure and modifications (Mathras) are made or added to it to form different sounds. We have focused on support for three languages such as the Devanagri script, Kannada and Tamil. Work is on in developing the scripts for other languages like Telugu, Gujarati etc," Gupta said.

In addition to the text, GKB, which can also be used as a mouse, allows the capture of signatures, pictures and other visual elements. This feature holds the potential application of creating and storing notes and images in any language as bitmaps. The GKB also helps shorten writing time by arranging letters alphabetically and requiring only phonetic modifiers. The device is to be manufactured and distributed by a third party, based on technology licensed from HP.

The system requirement for the device to be supported is Windows XP and Office 2002 or later. It works on Linux too.

The product will be available in the market by the end of this month at an estimated price of Rs 2,000(Indian Currency, approx. 50 US$) which could differ as per the distributor.