OVA develops ‘Odia Lipi’ to remove typing roadblocks

BHUBANESWAR : The Odia Virtual Academyunder the state Culture department has launched its own regional language typing tool – Odia Lipi – which promises to help users compose and edit Odia language text seamlessly. A first-of-its-kind Unicode typing tool, it is aimed at making Odia tech-friendly and typing error-free.

Officials of the academy said many people continue to use the 8-bit fonts which are not supported by many digital platforms and operating systems. “What happens is if you download a letter in Odia and the 8-bit font in which it has been typed is not present in your system, the font will not be compatible.

On the contrary, Odia Lipi uses Unicode fonts which will show up the same characters in every typeface. Since Unicode is supported by Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, and Android, it makes information exchange in Odia language very easy,” said an official.