The department of information technology (DIT), under the Union ministry of communications and information technology, has zeroed in on three positions on the keyboard where the new rupee symbol can be inserted. DIT is likely to finalise the position by the month-end. The Union cabinet approved the rupee symbol in June.
“All participating companies and stakeholders have been asked to submit feedback. Based on this, the final position will be finalised,” said a senior DIT official. He, however, refused to divulge the three locations.
“As per a decision, the symbol cannot be achieved by a single keystroke. It would be two-layered and can be written only by pressing two keys at a time,” said Mahesh Kulkarni, group coordinator for C-DAC’s graphic intelligence-based script technology (Gist). “The members have been asked to submit their feedback within a week after which a decision will be taken.”
The Pune-headquartered C-DAC was a party to the deliberations that took place on August 13 in Delhi. The other major parties were Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Wipro, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.
While all new keyboards will come with the combination for the symbol, about the keyboards in use, Kulkarni said: “A solution is being worked out at the application level, so that people can type out the symbol without it being present on the keyboards.”
A decision to insert the symbol on mobile handsets will follow soon.
C-DAC, along with DIT, has submitted a proposal to the Unicode Consortium in USA to encode the rupee symbol as per Unicode standards.
“We have submitted the proposal to Unicode to include the rupee sign in code point, which means there will now be a separate code for the symbol to be used globally,” Kulkarni said.
A meeting of the Unicode Consortium is scheduled in October, where a decision will be taken.
C-DAC had submitted a proposal to DIT three months back to make changes in Indian language keyboards.
But in the wake of recent developments, the proposals are being looked at again so that the rupee symbol can be incorporated.
