'Nepali' in Unicode Devanagari
'Nepali' in Unicode Devanagari

Nepali Fonts

Nepali is written in the Devanagari (or 'Nagari' script), which is also used for Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit. Nepali Devanagari has 11 vowels and 33 consonants and is largely phonetic, which means that the pronunciation closely resembles the writing system. In order to view or input the Devanagari script in a digital context, it is necessary to have a Devanagari font installed on one's computer or to have a Unicode enabled computer which has a keyboard driver for Indian (and preferably Nepali) input.

To date, the use of Nepali Devanagari on computers has been limited by the lack of standard cross-platform fonts. There are a variety of Nepali fonts available, but many of these are mutually incompatible due to different encodings (numeric codes that are mapped to character images or glyphs). Also, such fonts are for the most part developed by individuals, thus limiting their widespread use and dissemination. Thankfully, however, most Nepali fonts are available for both of the major operating platforms, Windows and Mac OS, even though they remain difficult to use consistently in Internet browsers. The ultimate solution to such problems has been the development of a Unicode Nepali font.

Unicode is an international organization that provides a standard encoding for all of the world's major languages. Nepali is included in the Unicode standard, under Devanagari. Click here to download the code chart for Devanagari from the Unicode website. As of January 2003, thanks to an initiative of Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Kathmandu, a Nepali Unicode font package has been released. This release marks the concluding stage of the current phase of the 'Nepali Font Standardization Project' organized by the Computer Association of Nepal (CAN). At present, the Nepali Unicode environment is compatible with a Windows operating system (2000 or XP) and also Apple Mac OS X. The Safari browser for Mac OS X also renders Unicode Nepali correctly. If you are having difficulties viewing Nepali Unicode on an Apple Mac, read Alan Wood's helpful comments on setting up your browser to view Unicode fonts. The Nepali Unicode package is available either as a CD from the Computer Association of Nepal, or as a free download (see below). The full package for Windows includes an installer for the Nepali Unicode Environment, a Nepali Typing Tutor (TypeMaster), a Sort Utility (Krama) and a Font converter utility (Converter).

THDL recommends the following Nepali fonts for public use:

Devanagari Unicode Input for Mac OS X

In September 2004, Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Kathmandu, Nepal, produced a Nepali Devanagari keyboard layout for Apple Mac OS X. To install the keyboard layout and icon, please follow these instructions:

  1. Download the NepaliRomanized.1.keylayout and the NepaliRomanized.1.icns to your desktop by holding down the option/alt key and clicking.
  2. Quit all running applications.
  3. Go to the Macintosh HD (or whatever your system hard drive is named) and find the following folder path: System / Library / Keyboard Layouts.
  4. Drag the two files you downloaded into the Keyboard Layouts folder.
  5. You will see a dialogue box which reads: "the item...could not be moved because "Keyboard Layouts" cannot be modified", click Authenticate.
  6. You will need to be logged in as the administrator to have the permission to Authenticate.
  7. Restart the computer.
  8. Open TextEdit and change the keyboard layout to NepaliRomanized (either by using the Apple menu bar on the top right of the desktop or by opening System Preferences / International / Input Menu and selecting NepaliRomanized.
  9. You should be able to type in Nepali using a Romanized keyboard layout which can be viewed by clicking here (GIF / JPEG).

You will need at least Mac OS X.2 (Jaguar) but preferably OX.3 (Panther) to be able to view and input Devanagari Unicode on your computer. You will also need to have the Asian language kit and fonts installed which came on the install discs for the operating system. We strongly recommend using the free OS X browser Safari rather than Internet Explorer. The former requires no special adjustment to view Unicode pages, while Internet Explorer is not smooth for Mac OSX. To prepare your browser for Unicode, we strongly suggest that you read Alan Wood's excellent and helpful pages on this topic. Microsoft Office for Mac is still not fully Unicode compliant. Office for Mac 2004, which was released in May 2004, offers limited Unicode support but Devanagari half-characters do not render. Mellel, a cheap word processor for OS X, is pretty good on Unicode input, but Devanagari half-characters are not rendered correctly. The best bet is TextEdit 1.3, the free Unicode-compliant editor which comes embedded within Mac OS X.

Installing Fonts

The process for installing fonts differs for each operating system. Installation instructions are given below for two of the most popular platforms, Windows and the Mac OS.

Windows

To install the fonts on a Windows machine:

  1. Unpack the zip-archive containing the fonts into a temporary folder.
  2. From the Start Menu, choose Settings and then choose Control Panel.
  3. From the resulting window, choose the Fonts folder. A separate window will appear displaying all the fonts presently installed on one's system.
  4. From the File menu of that window, choose Install New Font.
  5. From the Add Fonts window that then appears, choose the drive and navigate to the temporary folder where the font files have been unpacked. The list of available fonts should then appear.
  6. Click on the Select All button and then click OK.

Macintosh

To install the fonts on Macintosh OS through System 9.2.2:

  1. Unpack the sit-archive containing the fonts into a temporary folder.
  2. Go into Macintosh HD (or whatever one's system hard drive is named).
  3. Open the System Folder.
  4. Then open the Fonts folder.
  5. Drag the font suitcases from the temporary folder into the Fonts folder.

Note: On Mac OS X 10.1-3, the Fonts folder is in the Library folder of your home directory. The drag-and-drop procedure is the same.

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