Phonetic typing in Bengali

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_input_methods says Bengali Probhat has a mapping that is similar to phonetic. Is this close enough?

I have tried Avro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_input_methods#Avro_2 and was unsuccessful.
Anyway, I couldn't find Bengali Probhat in SCIM options and haven't tried. Could you help ?

Bengali Probhat would be one of the keyboard mappings; it's not part of either SCIM or Ibus. Use System Settings (Ubuntu 11.10) or the equivalent to bring up the Keyboard Layout manager. Click on the "+" sign. Scroll down until you see "Bengali Probhat". There are two of these (probably a bug). There is a keyboard icon to the right of the '+'; click on it.

The keyboard display may not match your keyboard exactly. This is a 102-key keyboard and you may have a 101-key keyboard. The difference is that the key to the right of "ShiftL" will be missing. And, the key to the left of "Return" labeled "U200C" will be positioned on the far right of the second row of keys.

Close the displays.

There should be a typewriter icon visible on your desktop; probably in the toolbar at the top. Right click it. Bengali Probhat should be visible. Choose it. Start up a terminal and start typing. It should be using Bengali characters.

Go back to the typewriter icon. Choose your system's language (English, maybe?). Type in the terminal. It probably will type English. This means your keyboard is configured to allow you to switch back and forth and that your terminals (and applications) can be multilingual.

Thanks ! But unfotunately Probhat is not working in native Ubuntu applications like Gedit or Libreoffice. But its working in web applications like when I type here say টেসট ।
Moreover I am not sure tha Probhat is a complete phonetic input keyboard

You are probably correct. The documentation only claimed "similarity" to a phonetic input keyboard.

About Probhat not working in LibreOffice or Gedit...I had Probhat chosen as my keyboard, brought up LibreOffice Writer, and started typing. The letters were English letters using the system keyboard. I went back to the keyboard icon and chose (more accurately, re-chose) Probhat. Thereafter, Bengali lettering appeared. This is a nuisance level bug in the the gnome-settings-daemon.

Did I replicate what you meant about Probhat not working in native Ubuntu applications? Or are you having trouble with dead keys or poorly mapped keys?

Typed into LibreOffice and copied into a Firefox textarea: ১২৩৪৫৬৭৮৯০-=

Bengali Probhat is also available in Ibus. I have not tried it with LibreOffice yet, but there is no reason to suspect a problem. I tested Ibus using Amharic Sera in LibreOffice a few weeks ago.

Progress?

Really sorry that I haven't responded to your updates. Strangely my Bengali key board inputs started working today. Maybe there is something wrongly configured in my Ubuntu 11.04 installation. I find my SCIM service comes up automatically, today I stopped it and found Probhat working.
If it works out permanently, I am still in the lookout of some help on typing Bengali consonant conjuncts as explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_alphabet.

There are complaints about Ibus bugs w/r to Indic languages of all kinds in another thread. I think this is as close to an answer as you are going to get without major improvements to Ibus.