SOFTware and FONTS
We develop fonts and related software (like keyboard layouts) required for processing text on computers. At present, we are selling software and fonts, only for typesetting Hindi, Marathi (& some other DevaNagari languages) and English. We will work hard to include support for other Indian and European languages-scripts.
Typesetting Multilingual text of
Hindi (DevaNagari) & English (Latin)
'Nagari' or 'Devanagari' script is used by millions of people for writing text of Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit and many other regional languages in India. English is also used by a lot of Indians, so we require computer-types (fonts) and software that can process, store and render multilingual text.
Unicode for DevaNagari
Before Unicode, Indians were using various encodings as there was no practical standard for processing Indic scripts in computers.
Though there was ISCII (Indian Script Code for Information Interchange) but no system vendor supported it! Indic code charts of Unicode were derived from ISCII-88!
Most of the scripts of Indian subcontinent largely follow similar rules for formation of syllables and even lot of characters of these scripts have one to one correspondence! So transliteration between Indian scripts is possible! Code points for characters of these scripts in Unicode are arranged according to a common plan.
Enabling Unicode in older computers should be a priority as there are lot of PCs with Windows 98 installed. We should remember that lot of Indians live below poverty line and it is not feasible for most organisations in India to keep upgrading!
Following are the DevaNagari-English software and fonts we have designed.
Unicode compliant OpenType Fonts
Modern operating systems which are Unicode based can directly let you enter text in most of the scripts in addition to English (DevaNagari, Gujarati etc.). These operating systems (like Windows 2000, XP) don't require additional software to enter and render text in most of the scripts. These operating systems require additional good OpenType fonts. In these operating systems we can type Hindi text along with English text directly even in plain text editors like Notepad.
We have designed and programmed a cool OpenType font - 'Akhil HE'. This font contains a logical set of DevaNagari glyphs (we call 'Saral Nagari') along with ASCII characters (regular Roman alphabets etc.). It is an optimised, synchronised and professionally instructed (hinted) font. We can easily typeset texts in DevaNagari along with English using this font.
There are lots of advantages in typesetting DevaNagari-Roman/Latin text using this font.
To see 'Sanskrit - Hindi text' (Gayatri Mantra) typesetted using this font click here.
Unicode Solution for Windows 98
As you may be knowing; Windows 98 do not support Unicode completely. As a lot of people still use Windows 98, we have developed a package named 'Sugam-98'.
It facilitates easy entry of Unicode encoded Nagari in Windows 98.
Components of Sugam-98:
- Aforementioned OpenType font - Akhil HE
- A simple TrueType font - Akhil
- iNagari-98 (previously called TransLit-98)
- InScript-98
To read more about iNagari click here.
Indian Software - LeKhaNi
In the past, we developed LeKhaNi (Lekhni) for Windows 95. It used to render and record text in a non standard encoding. Its last version was 2.1. Forthcoming Lekhni 3.0 will be a Unicode based multilingual editor.
