A list of South Asian language fonts

Frances Pritchett fp7 at columbia.edu
Wed Dec 7 12:45:00 UTC 1994


Dear colleagues,

Here is the list of South Asian fonts, as it presently stands.  We are 
incorporating it into the Inventory of Language Materials (ILM) section 
of the South Asia Gopher.  Of course it's very incomplete, but with your 
help and feedback it can become much more extensive.  Remember that I'm 
no computer expert, I'm just acting as a compiler.  All comments and 
evaluations of particular fonts will be most welcome.

Also, if you know of any computer language-learning materials, please let 
me know; we'll incorporate them into our language-by-language files on 
available teaching materials.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions,
Fran Pritchett



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       I N V E N T O R Y   O F
       L A N G U A G E
       M A T E R I A L S
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       An electronic publication project
       General editor:  Frances Pritchett <fp7 at columbia.edu>
       Publishing supervisor:  David Magier
       Hard copy publisher:  Southern Asian Institute,
               Columbia University
       Year of publication:  annual, with frequent updates
       May be copied or distributed without permission.
       Comments and suggestions are welcomed by the editor.

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       C O M P U T E R   S C R I P T   F O N T S
       Editor for Fonts:  Frances Pritchett,
              Columbia University <fp7 at columbia.edu>
       For general information about ILM, see:
              INTRODUCTION TO ILM

       IMPORTANT NOTE:  The editor has not tried out these fonts and
       does not vouch for any of their claims.  This information has
       been compiled as a public service only.

       --Last updated:  December 1994--

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AUTHOR:  Aklujkar, Prof. Ashok <aklujkar at unixg.ubc.ca>, Department of
        Asian Studies, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.,
        Canada V6T 1Z2.  Phone 604-822-5185 or 604-274-5353.  Fax 604-
        822-8937.
LANGUAGE:  Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi:  "Avanti," "Kashi"
PRICE:  $40.  ("I contribute the net proceeds to a student assistance
        fund.")
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac.
COMMENT:  "Avanti was made by me in 1985 (slightly improved in 1988)
        for dot-matrix printers; it is a considerably improved version
        of what George Hart (Univ. of California, Berkeley) had
        accomplished.  A logical assignment of Nagari letters to the
        Roman keyboard, one that speeds up typing and learning, is my
        other main contribution.  That the font prints well even on
        laser printers is something that still surprises me.  It is,
        for example, the type used for Devanagari text matter in my
        book *Sanskrit: an Easy Introduction to an Enchanting
        Language*.  The diskette also includes the Roman fonts "Ganga"
        and "Sindhu" which can be used for transliteration of most
        literary languages of South Asia" (--Author).
___

AUTHOR:  Bryant, Dr. Kenneth E. <ken.bryant at mtsg.ubc.ca>, Department
        of Asian Studies, 1871 West Mall, Univ. of British Columbia,
        Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1W5.  Phone 604-822-5185 or 604-
        274-5353.  Fax 604-822-8937.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Sanskrit:  "Jaisalmer" for Devanagari, "Taj" for
        Roman transliteration
PRICE:  $100.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac:  Postscript Type 1, Truetype.  Windows
        versions available soon.
COMMENT:  "The two fonts, sold as a package, come in Regular, Bold,
        Italic, and Bold-Italic.  Included in the package are keyboard
        layout files for the system folder, which extensively redefine
        the system of dead keys.  This is particularly important for
        Jaisalmer; it includes a very large number of conjuncts for
        Sanskrit which can only be accessed through dead key
        combinations.  Extensive documentation"  (--Author).
___

AUTHOR:  C-DAC, Center for Development of Advanced Computing, Pune,
        India.
LANGUAGE:  Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,
        Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sinhala,
        Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, etc.
CONTACT:  Mohan Tambe <tambe at parcom.ernet.in>, CDAC, Pune University
        Campus, Ganeshkhind, Pune, India 411 007.  Phone 212-33-2461,
        33-2483, 33-2479.  Fax 212-33-7551.
PRICE:  All the available fonts in any single script, Rs. 12,000.  Any
        two languages, Rs. 24,000.  All Indian scripts, Rs. 38,000.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  SCO-XENIX, or any IBM PC compatible running a Unix
        variant.
COMMENT:  A strikingly fine set of TrueType fonts for all the Indian
        languages.  (This is the same group responsible for the GIST
        card, a board for creating a multilingual machine from several
        different types of computers.)  Characters are encoded using
        the Government of India standard, ISCII.
INFORMATION:  James Nye <jnye at midway.uchicago.edu>, 312-702-8430
___

AUTHOR:  Chopde, Avinash <avinash at acm.org> <avinash at avid.com>, Avid
        Technology, Inc., Tewksbury, Mass.  Phone 508-640-3138.
LANGUAGE:  "ITRANS":  Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu
PRICE:  Free
ACCESS:  cs.duke.edu  /dist /sources /itrans32.*
        OR:  oak.oakland.edu /pub /msdos /tex /itrans32.*
OPERATING SYSTEM:  TeX on Unix/DOS
COMMENT:  .zip for DOS, .tar.Z for Unix.  A set of programs for
        producing Indian script output from transliterated input;
        optionally integrates with TeX; a formatter is included that
        outputs PostScript directly.  CS encoding will soon be added
        as a supported input coding scheme.
___

AUTHOR:  Courtney, David <tabalji at aol.com>
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Sanskrit
PRICE:  $25
ACCESS:  Available as a shareware package on the networks.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac, but adaptible for Windows.
COMMENT:  "A Truetype font.  The package contains extensive
        documentation and a large number of conjunct forms and a few
        dingbats; also a bit-mapped version.  It has a very large set,
        so many of the characters are only availible through deadkey
        combinations.  The real strength of the script is its
        orientation towords DTP applications that revolve around
        traditional Hindustani musical notation" (--Author).
___

AUTHOR:  Deshpande, Dr. Madhav <mmdesh at umich.edu>, Department of Asian
        Languages and Cultures, 3070 Frieze Building, Univ. of
        Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.  Phone 313-747-2159.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit
PRICE:  Each font $100, all three $250
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Postscript and truetype versions of Nagari and
        Roman diacritics fonts for Macintosh.  The Nagari "Madhushree"
        font works for Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi.  "Mandakini" works
        for Sanskrit and Hindi, and can do all the dotted letters used
        to transcribe Urdu sounds.  The Roman diacritics font,
        "Manjushree-CSX," follows the CSX coding, but has a lot more
        diacritics.
COMMENT:  "The print quality of the Devanagari fonts approximates the
        typography of Nirnayasagara press.  The Manjushree-CSX font
        looks like Times-Roman.  All three fonts are of the best
        publishing quality if used with a high resolution laser
        printer" (--Author).
___

AUTHOR:  Ecological Linguistics <ecoling at applelink.apple.com>, PO Box
        15156, Washington DC 20003.  Phone 202-547-7678.
LANGUAGE:  Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi,
        Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, etc.; also Kharoshti,
        Brahmi, Harappan symbols
PRICE:  $70 per font
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mostly Mac, TrueType for Windows also available.
COMMENT:  "We specialize in complex alphabets and, for Macintosh,
        super-efficient software-selectable keyboards" (--Author).
        Slogan:  "Offering All Alphabets of the World."
___

AUTHOR:  Flyn, Christopher J. <cfynn at sahaja.demon.co.uk>.
LANGUAGE:  Tibetan
MAINTAINER:  Dr. T. Matthew Ciolek <tmciolek at coombs.anu.edu.au>, ANU
        Social Sciences Information Systems Administrator, Coombs
        Computing Unit, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian
        National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
PRICE:  Free
ACCESS:  Gopher pointer:  Name=tibet-software; Type=1; Port=70;
        Path=ftp:coombs.anu.edu.au@ /coombspapers /otherarchives
        /asian-studies-archives /tibetan-archives /tibet-software;
        Host=cis.anu.edu.au
OPERATING SYSTEM:  The "TibKey" software is a Tibetan keyboard
        emulator program for Windows 3.1x and Tibetan `Modern'
        TrueType font.  Documentation (a total of 14 files, 390Kb) is
        included.
___

AUTHOR:  Govindaraj, Dr.
LANGUAGE:  Tamil
PRICE:  Free
ACCESS:  mac.archive.umich.edu:  /mac /system.extensions /font /type1
        /palladam2.1.sit.hqx
        OR:  wuarchive.wustl.edu:  /systems /mac /umich.edu
        /system.extensions /font /type1 /palladam2.1.sit.hqx
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Macintosh
___

AUTHOR:  Goyal, Ashok <goyal at bnr.ca>, Vaishnav Books Ltd.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit
MAINTAINER:  Digitron Computers, Toronto, Canada.  Phone 905-454-3620.
        Also:    Digitron, 3 Smithers Cr, Brampton, Ontario Canada L6Y
        3L3.
PRICE:  $199
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Windows
___

AUTHOR:  Hart, Prof. George.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Tamil
PRICE:  Free; these fonts are now entirely in the public domain.
ACCESS:  mac.archive.umich.edu:  /mac /system.extensions /font /type3
        /indianfonts.sit.hqx
        OR:  wuarchive.wustl.edu:  /systems /mac /umich.edu
        /system.extensions /font /type3 /indianfonts.sit.hqx
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Macintosh
INFORMATION:  Ravinder Bhumbla <rbhumbla at UCSD.EDU>
___

AUTHOR:  Hellingman, Jeroen <jhelling at cs.ruu.nl>
LANGUAGE:  Malayalam
PRICE:  Free
OPERATING SYSTEM:  TeX/Metafont
___

AUTHOR:  Humanities and Arts Computing Center.
LANGUAGE:  Tamil
MAINTAINER:  Humanities and Arts Computing Center, Univ. of
        Washington.  Email:  <ridgeway at blackbox.hacc.washington.edu>
PRICE:  Free
ACCESS:  ymir.claremont.edu:[TEX.BABEL.Tamil]*.*
OPERATING SYSTEM:  itrans (source in this post) or C + TeX with
        included preprocessor
___

AUTHOR:  Inaam Alvi Computers.
LANGUAGE:  Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hindi, Urdu
MAINTAINER:  Artistic Computers, 601 8th Ave., 2nd floor, New York, NY
        10018.  Phone 212-279-7010; 212-643-2199.  Fax:  212-714-2221.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Runs on PCs in DOS.
COMMENT:  Expensive but elegant; individuals can buy stripped-down
        versions of fonts actually designed for newspaper use.  Good
        technical support.
___

AUTHOR:  InPros (Intellectual Property Solutions) <info at inpros.com>,
        Box 57-2141, Houston, TX 77257-2141; phone 713-465-2967 (fax,
        voice mail, and fax-on-demand).
LANGUAGE:  Hindi:  "SheelRekha," "RoopLekha," "Kamal," etc.; Gujarati:
        "Shefali," "Nita," "Anarkali," "Agni," etc.; Bengali:
        "Jayanti," "BornaMala," etc.; Punjabi:  "Pushpa," "Suman,"
        "Badal," "Arup"; Sanskrit:  "Sansipro"; Transliteration:
        "Diplomat," "MonoPali"
PRICE:  $20+ for a set of three basic fonts.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac or MS-Windows.
COMMENT:  Fonts are said to be high-quality and inexpensive.
        Unencoded sample available by contacting <info at inpros.com>.
        Other languages and fonts are continuously being added.  "It
        is our intention to create a data base of files that can be
        printed in Hindi and other languages" (--Authors).
___

AUTHOR:  Kumar, Ashwini <kumar at duck.ncsc.org>.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, etc.
MAINTAINER:  H&M Enterprises, 8304 N.W. 113 Terrace, Oklahoma City, OK
        73162.  Phone 405-728-0634 (voice & fax).
OPERATING SYSTEM:  PC/XT,AT
COMMENT:  Bilingual word processor for IBM PC/XT and AT as well as
        clones.
___

AUTHOR:  Kushwaha, Ramesh <Ramesh.Kushwaha at um.cc.umich.edu>, Medcom,
        3757 Helen Ave., Ypsilanti, MI 48197.  Phone 313-434-1970.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi:  "Vernmala"
PRICE:  $25
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Outline, scaleable, True Type Font that can be used
        on any software supported under Microsoft Windows 3.1 or any
        Macintosh system.  Postscript Type 1, Type 3, Encapsulated
        Postscript or Bitmapped fonts can also be generated.
___

AUTHOR:  Lagally, Prof. Klaus, <lagally at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de>,
        Institut fuer Informatik, Zeige mir deine Uhr,
        Breitwiesenstrasse 20-22, 70565 Stuttgart, Germany.  Phone
        +49-711-7816392.  Fax +49-711-7816370.
LANGUAGE:  Urdu (also Arabic (fully vowelized), Persian, Pashto,
        Ottoman)
PRICE:  Free
ACCESS:  ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de:  /pub /TeX /arabtex
        /arabtex.%*,faq%
        OR:  sunsite.unc.edu:  /pub /packages /TeX /language /arabtex
OPERATING SYSTEM:  LaTeX, macro package plus METAFONT sources
COMMENT:  Uses Arabic-style Naskh fonts; Persian-style Nastaliq fonts
        under development.  Limited support for Biblical Hebrew
        (vowelized), Ugaritic Cuneiform (inquire).
___

AUTHOR:  Linguist's Software, Box 580, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580.  Phone
        206-775-1130.  Fax 206-771-5911.
LANGUAGE:  Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Sanskrit
PRICE:  $99.95 each
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Windows.
___

AUTHOR:  Linotype-Hell, Bath Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire,
        England GL53 7LR.  Phone 024-222-2333.
LANGUAGE:  Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil
PRICE:  substantial
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac, MS-DOS, etc.
___

AUTHOR:  Monotype Typography Ltd., Perrywood Business Park, Salfords,
        Redhill, Surrey RH1 5JP, England.  Phone 44-0737-76-5959.  Fax
        0737-76-9243, 0737-76-0942.  Contact: Ian Bezer or Julie
        Collier-Smith.
LANGUAGE:  Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam,
        Oriya, Pushto, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu
OPERATING SYSTEM:  "Monotype seems to have packages which provide the
        required font together with Mac or MS Windows keyboard
        drivers, etc.  I was quoted 238 pounds for a Devanagari font
        with keyboard driver for Windows.  You can also buy larger
        collections of characters, spread over several fonts, which
        have a greater variety of special sorts (pre-made conjuncts,
        etc.), but then you have to sort out the composition issues
        yourself.  Prices still reasonable."  (--Dominik Wujastyk)
COMMENT:  "These fonts are *really* good.  This is what has been used
        for major publishing (including newspapers) all over Asia
        since the twenties." (--Dominik Wujastyk)
___

AUTHOR:  Mukkavilli, Lakshmankumar and Lakshmi <lzk60 at css.amdahl.com>,
        915 Almaden Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94086.
LANGUAGE:  Telugu
ACCESS:  blackbox.hacc.washington.edu:  pub /tex /telugu (temporary)
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Metafont and TeX
___

AUTHOR:  Multi-Lingual Scholar, Gamma Productions, Ind., 710 Wilshire
        Blve, Suite 609, Santa Monica, CA 90401.  Phone 213-394-8622.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Urdu, etc.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  IBM
COMMENT:  This company aspires to cover an enormous number of
        languages worldwide, including South Asian language fonts.
___

AUTHOR:  Rahman, Anisur, 722 N. 13th Street #505, Milwaukee, WI 53233.
        Phone 414-223-3152.
LANGUAGE:  Bengali
PRICE:  $0, copyrighted
ACCESS:  use archie, sgaon.zip Sonar Gaon
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Windows 3.0
___

AUTHOR:  Scharf, Peter M. <Peter_Scharf at brown.edu>.  Dept. of
        Classics, Brown Univ., PO Box 1856, Providence, RI 02912.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Sanskrit
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac; bit-map screen font, transliteration system
COMMENT:  Designed for easy typing of all-ASCII character sets; can be
        adapted for inputting to other fonts
___

AUTHOR:  Script Software International, CAE Lake Shandalee Road,
        Livingston Manor, NY 12758-0131.  Phone 914-439-3972.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Sanskrit
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Bitmap and PostScript laser fonts for the Mac and
        PC, Optical Character Recognition for the Mac only, and
        utilities for file conversion, transliteration, and easier
        typing.
___

AUTHOR:  Singh, Jasbir <jasbir at maboli.com>, Maboli Systems, Inc., P.O.
        Box 3629, Wise, VA 24293.
LANGUAGE:  Punjabi:  "AnandpurSahib Lippi," "Jhelum Lippi"
PRICE:  $35 for Regular Version, $100 for Professional Version
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Mac, Windows
COMMENT:  Price includes one TrueType font, manuals and templates,
        postage.  Professional package has both fonts, extras, two
        Punjabi games.  Both versions can be used with *all* software.
___

AUTHOR:  Srinivasan, Dr. K.
LANGUAGE:  Tamil
PRICE:  $40 (shareware), $0 for non-profit use
ACCESS:  oak.oakland.edu:  /pub /msdos /editor /adami91.zip
        OR:  wuarchive.wustl.edu:  /mirrors /msdos /editor
        /adami91.zip
        OR:  nic.switch.ch:  /mirrors /msdos /editor /adami91.zip
OPERATING SYSTEM:  DOS; Windows
COMMENT:  Standalone word processor.
___

AUTHOR:  Frans J. Velthuis <velthuis at rc.rug.nl>, Nyensteinheerd 267
        9736 TV,     Groningen, The Netherlands.
LANGUAGE:  Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, etc. (Devanagari font)
PRICE:  $0
ACCESS:  available by anonymous FTP as `devnag' and supporting files,
        from the following TeX font repositories (among others):
        ftp.tex.ac.uk:  /ctan /tex-archive /language /devanagari
        nic.switch.ch:  /mirror /tex /language /devanagari
        ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au:  /pub /tex /ctan /language /devanagari
        ftp.ibp.fr:  /pub /TeX /CTAN /language /devanagari
        ftp.shsu.edu:  /tex-archive /language /devanagari
        labrea.stanford.edu:  /pub /tex /incoming
OPERATING SYSTEM: TeX, C, METAFONT source
___

AUTHOR:  Vishnu, Meenan <mvishnu at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca>.
LANGUAGE:  "All Indian languages"
MAINTAINER:  Ethno Multimedia, Toronto, Canada.
OPERATING SYSTEM:  Macintosh; Windows
___

LANGUAGE:  Urdu
MAINTAINER:  Amir Aslam (?) <usgaaaax at gsusgi2.gsu.edu>
ACCESS:  Call 1-800-308-8883 for information, free catalogue
___

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