Reading and writing Hindi on Windows

Tips to view this website and other electronic content, ie text, mail, news, web pages in Hindi, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit and other languages using the devanagari script, on these operating systems:

Websites

If you are on Win*, the best way to do a browser test is to have a look at the BBC Hindi page. But you obviously came here because you were not able to see these pages in the first place.

First, what do you see right now when you go to the BBC Hindi page?

• boxes, or
• junk characters?

It should look like this. Thanks to Sunil Bhadekar for the image.

If you see junk characters, set the View->Encoding to UTF-8. You'll start seeing the hindi characters, or boxes. If you see boxes, it means the browser is not able to find a a utf-8 encoded font to show the characters, so it just replaces the missing "glyphs" or shapes, with boxes.

It may not be able to find the font because:

• The font is not installed on the machine, in which case, you can get any one of the fonts and copy it to your Windows Fonts folder or WinNT Fonts folder as the case may be. You should now have the font in this folder.
• The script-encoding-font mapping is not set in the browser.

What you can do to resolve this:

• For IE
  go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Fonts. Choose devanagari from the list and click on any one of the fonts that appear in the box(es) below. If no fonts appear in the list(happens sometimes) come out anyway, refresh the Hindi page . You should be able to see it now. If not, close the browser windows and reopen them, if even that doesn't work, reboot and try again. But most cases you won't have to go that far.
• for Mozilla
  go to Edit->Preferences->Appearance->Fonts and set the font to raghu/raghindi.

If you are on win2k or xp, you might find these tips useful.

Additional instructions for installing the Indic language pack.

Optional For Windows 2000

Go to Control Panel->Regional Settings->Langauges->Check Indic from the list of languages, Click Apply/Ok. You will be asked to enter the Windows 2000 cd. System will have to be rebooted, after which you can choose the keyboard layouts.

Optional For Windows XP

Go to Control Panel->Regional Settings->Langauges->Install support for complex scripts including Thai. Click Apply/Ok. You will be asked to enter the Windows XP cd. System will have to be rebooted, after which you can choose the keyboard layouts.

Trouble typing in your language?

The INSCRIPT keymap is default, and one of the most popular. The layouts were developed by Indian government agencies and you can get them from the Sun website. You can copy or print the keymaps for ready reference.

I hate INSCRIPT. Why can't k type क, and d type

It can. Download an input method editor (only for Win2k and WinXP). Once you download it, unzip it, and install.

After this:

For Windows 2000

Instructions are similar to WinXP, see below.

For Windows XP

Control Panel -> Regional And Language Options -> Languages -> Details -> Add Set Input Language to Hindi, choose Keyboard Layout/IME = Indic IME. Click OK, OK. You may be asked to reboot.

Now you can type Hindi the way you type English.

The IME is known to not work with Outlook Express, though it works fine with Notepad and MS Outlook. The workaround for now is to type in Notepad and copy paste to the outlook express window. If anybody knows the reason or fix for this please let us know. Other IME's: Sarasvati, Chandas.

For Windows 9x+

You can download the takhti editor to type in devangari. It comes with its own keymap file, which is phonetic by default, and you also have the option to change it to suit your needs. It will also work on Win2000 and Win XP.

That's it!

You should be able to view Devanagari content now. If not, ask at http://lists.sarovar.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devanaagarii-lipi, somebody there would be interested in solving such problems. Done? Now you can view the content on this website: