Mobile Apps Development: Towards Incorporating Regional and National languages in Flutter App

Abstract

As technology is spreading very fast across the world, people from different countries have started using portable devices like phones, tablets, or laptops. People belonging to different countries and cultures are using smartphones. Most smart apps are not available in multiple languages, users are bounded to use apps in the language in which the app is developed. Developing a multilingual app and taking input in multiple languages is still a headache for developers. This research aims to develop a multilingual keyboard package for flutter apps. By using this package developers can easily add a multilingual keyboard to their apps. For now, the package only supports English, Urdu, and Sindhi languages. Along with language keyboards, we have added some special characters and a numeric keyboard as well. The keyboard interface is highly customizable, developers can customize the keyboard interface as per their preferences, and they can change different properties of keyboards including, key text color, key background color, keyboard background color, and shadows. Developers can reduce end-user efforts by adding this keyboard package to their apps. End-users can interact with the app in their native language without any extra effort of downloading third-party keyboards. This package allows users to enter text in multiple languages in the same or different input fields. After the publication of this package, we conducted a survey, in which questions like the performance, accuracy, and interface of the keyboards have been asked of developers. In the survey, we asked for the developer's suggestions and feedback about keyboards, and other languages they want us to add to the package.

Keywords

• Sindhi Keyboard
• Urdu Keyboard
• Multilingual Keyboards
• Soft keyboards
• In-App Keyboards
• Flutter Apps