Utility: Sanskrit Diacritic Font Text Conversion
(Tested using IE6, IE7 and Firefox 2)
By selecting a font name from the selection list above (“1. ???”, etc.) or by clicking or , you can choose among the various fonts.
(NOTE: If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, then, with the exception of “Balaram”, none of the free downloadable fonts listed below will be included in the font selection list unless they are actually installed on your computer, otherwise, all of the free fonts will be included in the list even if they are not installed. The reason for this is simple: As far as I know, it is not possible for a list of your computer’s installed fonts to be obtained from web browsers other than Internet Explorer 6.0 or later.)
The is designed for maximum compatibility with the “Lucida Sans Unicode” font and with the older versions of the “Tahoma” and “Microsoft Sans Serif” fonts. If clicking results in miscellaneous graphics characters being displayed, this indicates that the selected font is not installed on your computer.
Clicking causes the Unicode diacritics in the text box to be converted to maximum compactness and for maximum compatibility with the “devotee hostile” web browsers such as Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox.
Unlike the “devotee friendly” web browser, Internet Explorer, these other web browsers are incapable of doing automatic character substitution, and they are not compatible with the “SMIL 2.0” multimedia specification. (See “Śrila Prabhupāda’s Lectures/Conversations with Synchronized Text” - http://pratyatosa.com/_ATS_PrabhupadasTapes.htm)
To reverse the effect of , click , or, if that doesn’t work, click and then .
To compare two fonts, first select one and then the other. Then use the button to toggle back and forth between the two fonts. (This will work only if no buttons other than , , , or are clicked after the second font selection.)
Clicking results in a more compact version of the HTML code than is attained by clicking , but results in a version which conforms most closely to the HTML standards. Clicking results in an alternate version which also conforms closely to the HTML standards.
The “Tahoma” and “Microsoft Sans Serif” Fonts
BREAKTHROUGH! (Kṛṣṇa’s mercy!) Sanskrit diacritics with no special font required: http://pratyatosa.com/691226IN.BOS.html. The “691226IN.BOS.html” web page, as does this one, uses the “Tahoma” font. The newer versions (dated 7/17/2004 or later) of the “Tahoma” font and the “Microsoft Sans Serif” font both display 30 out of the 31 standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters correctly on most Windows XP/Vista computers. (Try clicking and then above with “1. Tahoma” or “2. Microsoft Sans Serif” selected.)
The “Segoe UI” Font
The “Segoe UI” font is the first “off-the-shelf” font that I’ve seen that displays all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters correctly, but with non-Internet Explorer web browsers, it only displays 30 out of 31 correctly. It comes standard with Windows Vista computers and it’s installed automatically when MS Word 2007 is installed.
(Try clicking and then above with “3. Segoe UI” selected.)
The “Balaram” Font
Free Sanskrit Diacritic Font Downloads!
NOTE: This web page was created using Notepad.
Except for the special fonts, the background image file, the keyboard command JavaScript file and the common JavaScript file, it is completely self contained, and the absence of these three files will not cause any problems. Please feel free to save it to your hard
drive using “File/Save as…”. Double-click on the newly created
“Pratyatosa - Utility - Sanskrit Diacritic Font Text Conversion” icon (“SanskritDiacriticTextConversion” icon for Firefox), and make it one
of your “Favorites”. It will work perfectly even when you are no
longer connected to the Internet, or, heaven forbid, when this web
page is no longer available!
Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome.
| Home | free font downloads |THIS WEB PAGE URL: http://pratyatosa.com/SanskritDiacriticTextConversion.htm |
“Balaram” is not a Sanskrit diacritic Unicode font. Balaram is one of a family of Sanskrit diacritic fonts developed by ISKCON in the ’90s. ISKCON fonts such as Balaram, ScaGoudy, etc. include all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters, but none of these characters are mapped according to the Unicode standard.
Sample of the “Odana Plus” font. (Download for free below.)
• After downloading one of the .zip files, unzip it, and install the font by following the instructions in the included “_Readme.txt” file.
• All of these downloadable fonts are capable of displaying all 31 of the standard ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic transliteration characters correctly except for “Arial Unicode MS”, “DejaVu Sans Condensed”, “DejaVu Serif Condensed”, “Garava”, “Garava Heavy”, “Garava Small Caps”, and “Segoe UI” all of which display all 31 correctly with the exception of “LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CHANDRABINDU” (
). The Segoe UI font displays all 31 correctly only with Internet Explorer.
• The fonts with names that end in “Plus” were enhanced through the agency of modifications to one or more of the Sanskrit diacritic characters and/or the addition of one or more missing Sanskrit diacritic characters. To accomplish this, I used a program called “Font Creator Pro 5.0”, which worked very well once I got the hang of it.
of the above downloadable Unicode fonts (“Balaram” is not a Unicode font) work reliably with Windows XP / Internet Explorer 6.0, but the same cannot be said for any of the dozens of ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic fonts, such as “Balaram”, “Krishna Arial”, “Rama-ZapfChancery”, “Sanskrit-New Caledonia”, “ScaOptima” or “Tamal”.
Even after remapping their diacritic characters according to the Unicode standard, none of the ISKCON fonts could be made to work reliably with Windows XP / Internet Explorer 6.0.
Pratyatoṣa Dāsa ()
