Devanagari font where is it

Question

Devanagari font where is it

Hi,

I may be receiving some Hindi text soon and so I went to a Hindi website to check out my mac. It didn't render quite right.

So I went to the Adobe forum and was told Mac comes with Devanagari, but I can't find it.

What am I missing?

Garrett

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Jan 6, 2007 6:24 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 7, 2007 5:39 AM in response to Garrett Connelly

So now that you have solved my problem, where do I
find the fonts I need? On the OS cd somewhere?

Yes, it should have been installed by default. But I can easily mail it to you if you send your address (tom at bluesky dot org).

Wow, I'm amazed Adobe completely ignored a language
almost a billion people speak.

Their Windows products may well work right, I don't know.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 6, 2007 8:03 PM in response to Garrett Connelly

I may be receiving some Hindi text soon and so I went
to a Hindi website to check out my mac. It didn't
render quite right.

It has to be a web site in Unicode and you need to use Safari I think to get correct rendering. This one would be a good test:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/

So I went to the Adobe forum and was told Mac comes
with Devanagari, but I can't find it.

You should find the font Devanagari MT in Library/Fonts. If you need to input Devanagari, you'll have to activate the Devanagari keyboard layout in system preferences/international/input menu.

If the text you receive is not Unicode, you will have to find and download whatever custom font it was created with.

Some more info:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/TypingDevanagari.html

Note that some apps, in particular MS Office for Mac and I think also Adobe Mac stuff, cannot do Devanagari.

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Answer 3

Jan 6, 2007 8:52 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom,

There is no Devanagari font in my library, thus the site you suggested did not render correctly.

I did read your very fluid discription of typing with the Devanagari font. Hats off! Your writing skill is growing nicely, I could almost feel myself as accomplished and making the keystrokes you described. Very well written, Tom.

So now that you have solved my problem, where do I find the fonts I need? On the OS cd somewhere?

You of course have opened another for me gigantic problem. I tried using Pages and other page imposition software, with the idea of having an alternate method of publishing my paperback manuals. I was peeved with Adobe at the time because quark bought the page imposition software that is what I use as a plug-in for Adobe InDesign 4.0.2. To make a long story short, I tried several layout companies and page imposition softwares but nothing measured up, and, I'm sad to say, Pages was among the least useful (unless it has changed recently, it's mostly a collection of templates with a flashy animated GUI).

Wow, I'm amazed Adobe completely ignored a language almost a billion people speak. Luckily Apple is more up to speed about communicating around the world. Maybe I'll be shopping for my next publishing software creative suite in India. Now that's a concept I hadn't even considered until this very moment.

I'll be able to put the potable water manual on the web using utf-8 and text edit. This will be the first time the web preceded the printed manual.

Garrett

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Answer 4

Rothrock

Level 4

1,467 points

Jan 7, 2007 7:59 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I too find it nearly impossible to believe that there is no real page layout software that can handle Hindi.

Tom – noticed a couple things. You need to change the directions for the eyelash RA. It would be RA + halant + nukta. I think.

Also at the end with the round up of software, Flash can actually kinda half support Devanagari. It can import a unicode text file and if the end user has unicode support (and font) the player will show it correctly. There is no font embedding or direct devanagari input in the authoring environment, but it is better than nothing.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 7, 2007 8:35 AM in response to Rothrock

I too find it nearly impossible to believe that there
is no real page layout software that can handle
Hindi.

The only thing I've seen is this for Windows:

http://www.quark.com/products/xpress/indian.html

You need to change the
directions for the eyelash RA. It would be RA +
halant + nukta. I think.

I think it works either way. The old Apple manual says nukta first. Do you have another reference somewhere?

Also at the end with the round up of software, Flash
can actually kinda half support Devanagari.

Thanks!

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Answer 6

Rothrock

Level 4

1,467 points

Jan 7, 2007 8:57 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I tried it and didn't get anything doing the nukta first. But did get it going the otherway. (In textedit.) I have absolutely no idea what an eyelash RA is for, but I'm pretty sure that is the way to make it! 🙂

Interesting about the Quark Mudra. I find it typical of Quark that there really isn't any information about the program – not even a screen shot. I found a press release which seems to indicate they released it in 2000 and since the number is still 4.1, I would imagine they haven't updated it since. Of course it probably costs in the range of $900 (or more). It is only Windows. Most likely isn't unicode compliant. But other than that I bet its a dream – NOT! (I'm really an anti-Quark kind of guy. Unless you hadn't guessed.)

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Answer 7

Rothrock

Level 4

1,467 points

Jan 7, 2007 9:25 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I tried it and didn't get anything doing the nukta first. But did get it going the otherway. (In textedit.) I have absolutely no idea what an eyelash RA is for, but I'm pretty sure that is the way to make it! 🙂

Interesting about the Quark Mudra. I find it typical of Quark that there really isn't any information about the program – not even a screen shot. I found a press release which seems to indicate they released it in 2000 and since the number is still 4.1, I would imagine they haven't updated it since. Of course it probably costs in the range of $900 (or more). It is only Windows. Most likely isn't unicode compliant. But other than that I bet its a dream – NOT! (I'm really an anti-Quark kind of guy. Unless you hadn't guessed.)

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 7, 2007 10:38 AM in response to Rothrock

I tried it and didn't get anything doing the nukta
first. But did get it going the otherway. (In
textedit.)

Perhaps you did it in isolation rather than with a following letter? On my system, both Panther and Tiger, it does work both ways when something follows, with TextEdit and Devanagari Qwerty. I can get र्त by typing r-f-shift+f-t or typing r-shift+f-f-t.

In the Unicode specs, eyelash ra is supposed to be produced by either 0931 (= 0930 + 093C) + 094D (rule R5) , or by 0930 + 094D + 200D (ZWJ) (rule R5a). In fact what happens is that typing a nukta after a halant in OS X produces a ZWJ. It's interesting that two different encodings result in the same glyph structure. From the Unicode specs I am thinking perhaps nukta plus halant would be found in Marathi/Newari and halant plus nukta more likely in Hindi. Do you think that is right?

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Answer 9

Rothrock

Level 4

1,467 points

Jan 7, 2007 11:19 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Aha, I do get the same behavior that you do too. I can't really shed anymore light on why there are two methods – before today I'd never even heard of an "eyelash ra." I've never seen it or come across it so I don't know what kinds of words it would even be in.

Crazy small world. I just accidently clicked on my Rosetta Stone software in the dock and on the TV a commercial for Rosetta Stone just came on. And of course the language I have for it is Hindi.

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Answer 10

Jan 7, 2007 1:27 PM in response to Rothrock

iCalamus looks like a pro layout software, I'm not able to open a new page for some reason (it worked once), but here's what support said about my Hindi question

"I don't have this font but I can confirm that iCalamus supports all fonts which are supported by Mac OS X, with all their unicode characters."

Garrett

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Answer 11

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 7, 2007 1:35 PM in response to Garrett Connelly

here's what support said about my Hindi
question

"I don't have this font but I can confirm that
iCalamus supports all fonts which are supported by
Mac OS X, with all their unicode characters."

Unfortunately that may not mean much. You have to support more than the characters in Devanagari -- you need to transpose the vowels and combine consonants when required, and if you don't know what it is really supposed to look like, you might not realize that this is not being done.

But I would always give such an app a try!

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Answer 12

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 7, 2007 1:43 PM in response to Rothrock

before today I'd never even heard of an
"eyelash ra." I've never seen it or come across it so
I don't know what kinds of words it would even be
in.

Here's something to make you sorry you ever did hear of it:-)

http://unicode.org/~emuller/iwg/p8/utcdoc.html

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Answer 13

Rothrock

Level 4

1,467 points

Jan 7, 2007 9:09 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

I had found that link and read most of it. It seems that is not used in Hindi.

I tried iCalumus, briefly. It does basic input and gets the vowels in the correct spots. But it can't do any of the conjuncts. I pasted some text that I typed in Text edit and it did retain its conjuncts. I was able to change the size, line breaks, color, etc. I didn't do much test, just a bit. It seems that it might actually hold some promise – as long as you never need to edit the text!

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