Unicode Gurmukhi Fonts and Information

NOTE: This web-page is updated on December 30, 2006. Many Unicode fonts are updated & some added.

This web page provides information about Unicode Gurmukhi/Hindi fonts and links for downloading Gurmukhi Unicode fonts and related files made by Kulbir S Thind, MD.

What is Unicode: The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards. Unicode is the accepted international standard that includes support for all major scripts of the World and is adopted by all current major computer operating systems. This is a 16 bit standard that allows use of more than 65000 characters in one font. It has support for major Indic (Indian) scripts that include Devanagari (Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit), Bengali (Bengali, Assamese), Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Microsoft Windows XP has full support for Indic scripts, including Gurmukhi. All future development regarding scripts will be based on Unicode.

Advantages of Unicode relating to Gurmukhi script: The purpose of this write-up is not to give any detailed information on this topic, but some points are worth mentioning. Migration to Unicode may not be painless as one has to adopt to new ways (but it is not a big deal) and for editing purposes, one has to have a software that has support for Unicode. For example, to edit Gurmukhi Unicode text on Windows XP, MS Word 2003 becomes a necessity. However, there are many advantages in using Unicode text. Documents and web-pages made with Unicode text, when viewed with an appropriate web-browser on a computer with support for Unicode, will always be viewed in the right script even if the font in which web-pages are made is not installed into the system (just as English text is always English, even if the font in which it is made is missing). One can name files and folders in Gurmukhi, search web pages in Gurmukhi, sort text with ease, exchange Gurmukhi data without having to worry about fonts and avoid the hassles of upper-case lower and spacing problems that happen when many available non-Unicode Gurmukhi fonts are used. The implementation of Indic scripts by Unicode has been done as per recommendations by a the Indian government and it is done in such a way that transliteration (phonetic) between Indic scripts will be easy as code points for corresponding characters are well defined. Thus, the Gurbani files made with Unicode fonts can be transliterated into other Indic scripts with ease. You may read more on this topic.

Before you attempt to install and use Unicode Gurmukhi fonts, for which downloading links are at the bottom of this page, you must understand the following:

Unicode is the accepted international standard for rendering fonts on computers with different operating systems. Computers with different operating systems are gradually adopting this as the ultimate standard for the future. However, it is still evolving. It is 16 bit standard and is a major step forward compared to other standards for use of fonts on the computers.
Regarding the PCs (personal computers) with MS Windows operating systems, Gurmukhi Unicode fonts can only be used on those with Windows XP operating system. And only the programs designed to make use of Unicode standard can make use of these fonts. Many older versions of MS (Microsoft) Office cannot make use of Unicode fonts. Although MS Office 2000, XP, 2002 may display and print documents containing Gurmukhi-Unicode fonts, only MS Office 2003 has a full support for Unicode standard. Thus anyone who wants to edit documents with Unicode fonts on a PC with Windows XP must also have MS Office 2003 or later. Thus anyone who wants to edit documents with Unicode fonts on a PC with Windows XP must also have MS Office 2003 or later. OpenOffice that is free and can be downloaded from http://www.OpenOffice.org , does not have the scope and breadth of feature as MS Word and seems not to handle large documents well, but seems to handle Unicode fonts.
Although all PCs with Windows XP operating system have the support for Unicode standard; generally, such PCs do not come ready with Punjabi language support installed and this must be done by the user. This is achieved through the “Control Panel”, by double clicking on the “Regional and Language Options” icon and then by making the appropriate selections. Support for complex Asian scripts must be installed before installing Punjabi language/Gurmukhi keyboard input utility. (NOTE: AT THE END OF THIS PAGE IS A LINK FOR DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS). After this is achieved, a keyboard input control utility gets installed over the task bar which helps the user control the keyboard input by toggling between different keyboard input methods (the default being the English).
Once the Punjabi language facility is installed into your Windows XP; one has to switch/toggle to the Punjabi keyboard input system to be able to type Gurmukhi characters. The switching between the Gurmukhi & English typing input can also be achieved by pressing the Alt+Shift keys on the keyboard or by selecting the input language through the task bar. The default Gurmukhi font that comes with Windows XP is ‘Raavi’. An alternate font in Windows XP for typing Gurmukhi is Arial Unicode MS (Note: this font is a part of some software by Microsoft and may not be present on all systems). Tahoma is another font from Microsoft that has Gurmukhi characters. However, you can install other Gurmukhi Unicode fonts (such as made available here), which may then be used instead.
There are some peculiarities of typing Gurmukhi Unicode fonts, which must be understood. For example Sihaaree is always typed afterwards and you cannot type Eerhee followed by Sihaaree OR Bihaaree, instead you must type a compound "SihaareeErhee" (ਇ) OR "EerheeBihaaree" (ਈ). This also applies to "UrhaaAunkarh" (ਉ), UrhaaDulainkarh" (ਊ), "EerheeLaavaa" (ਏ), "AirhaaDulaavaan" (ਐ), "UrhaaHorha" (ਓ) and "AirhaaKanaurhaa" (ਔ). If you try to type the wrong way you will not get the desired output, but instead, at each wrong step you will get a letter followed by a dotted circle symbol followed by LagaaMatraa. (NOTE: Regarding these special situations, it is possible to achieve natural writing method thorough modifications of the keyboard/text input method and that has been achieved in the keyboards available for downloading through the links given below).
The default keyboard input method (from Microsoft) is not very intuitive. However, this can all be changed to one’s liking by using a freeware from Microsoft that can be downloaded from: http://microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/msklc.mspx With this program one can design a Keyboard (input method) to one's liking that can then be installed onto any computer with Windows XP operating system. Alternatively a shareware utility called “Keyboard Layout Manager” (that can be downloaded from the internet: http://www.klm.freeservers.com/spx can also change the keyboard input method.
The current version of the Gurmukhi Unicode standard does not have support for some special characters that are used in Gurbani/old Gurmukhi. AnmolUniBani, AnmolUniBani-Bold and AnmolUniBaniHeavy Unicode fonts do provide support for most of such characters. However, it is important to understand what it means. Reading of next two paragraphs should make that clear.

As any one can imagine, it is not easy to make all the alphabet characters of the world with so many different requirements work smoothly in one computer system, and that is what the "Uniscribe" font engine of Windows XP does. Many fonts of the world including Indic fonts (of the languages of India) have complex requirements for typing Unicode mapped characters and related subrange characters. Uniscribe does all that. Thus as can be expected, Uniscibe engine is very particular about "Function" (and not so much about form). Regarding the Punjabi language, Uniscribe supports all the Gurmukhi characters mapped to Unicode standard and many others in the subrange (that are used in Gurmukhi but do not have allocated locations in Unicode range). However, so far, a number of special characters that are used in Gurbani/old Gurmukhi are not supported. There is an added problem as some of the methods used in Gurbani for combining LagaMatra disobey the common rules of modern Punjabi that are incorporated into Uniscribe. For example in Gurbani we find Aunkarh and Horha (double vowel sign) used over the same consonant and also Bihari after a Tippi or Bindi. These are the obvious violations of rules of modern Punjabi. Gurbani also uses alternate characters in the same text (like Udaat & Yakash, that may be considered alternates of paireenHaha & halfYaya) for which there is no provision in Uniscribe.

To achieve the desired results in the fonts that provide support for Gurbani, I have used Uniscribes built-in support for typing Paireen characters (subjoined forms) with Virama+Consonant method of typing. Aditional support for characters that Uniscibe can not support in the Gurmukhi range is provided through the use of Private Use Area . Thus, it is possible, although less likely, that my support for Gurbani/old Gurmukhi in my Bani fonts may cause some issues regarding some functions (concerned mainly with language conversion/transliteration). This is the reason, that I have decided to make two versions of such fonts: (1) standard that are identical to what is supported by Uniscribe in their Unicode fonts and (2) the ones that provide support for Gurbani/old Gurmukhi. The later have a suffix "Bani" added to their name, to differentiate these from standard fonts.
How to type special characters in AnmolUniBani (Unicode Gurmukhi) font: [NOTE: The first 4 situations are universal (generally present in all Gurmukhi Unicode fonts), but the remaining are specific to my fonts other than AnmolUni.

Other Paireen characters (subjoined forms) are present in many of my fonts are shown below (Note: The Sasaa characters shown below are used to illustrate placement). These are typed by typing Virama (Halant) followed by the corresponding character.

These specialized characters that are presnet in most of my fonts are some times required for special situations.

SPECIAL THANKS: My special thanks to Sukhjinder Singh Sidhu (http://guca.sourceforge.net/) who provided valuable help in the creation of Gurmukhi Unicode fonts. I am very grateful to him for keeping me on the right path regarding Unicode font compatibility issues and for collaborating with me in finding solutions for issues that arose out of this. His expertise in this field has been useful. I am also thankful to him for extensive testing of my Unicode Gurmukhi fonts. Kulbir S Thind, MD.

1	AnmolUni.ttf (Regular Gurmukhi Unicode font)	135 KB	Download	V 1.4
2	AnmolUni-Bold.ttf (Bold version of #1)	112 KB	Download	V 1.4
3	AnmolUniHeavy.ttf (Heavy version of #1)	112 KB	Download	V 1.4
4	AnmolUniBani.ttf (Gurmukhi Unicode font for Gurbani)	136 KB	Download	V 1.4
5	AnmolUniBani-Bold.ttf (Bold version of GurbaniUniBani font)	127 KB	Download	V 1.4
6	AnmolUniBaniHeavy.ttf (Heavy version of GurbaniUniBani font)	120 KB	Download	V 1.4
7	DOWNLOAD ALL (1 TO 6) AS ONE ZIP FILE	340 KB	Download	V 1.4

1	AmbarKalmi.ttf (A stylish Gurmukhi Unicode font)	76 KB	Download	V 1.01
2	AmbarNarrow.ttf (A Gurmukhi Unicode font with narrow characters)	80 KB	Download	V 1.01
3	AmbarNeon.ttf (A Neon type Gurmukhi Unicode font)	112 KB	Download	V 1.01
4	AmbarOutlined.ttf (An Outlined Gurmukhi Unicode font)	100 KB	Download	V 1.01
5	AmbarRaised.ttf (A 3D type Gurmukhi Unicode font)	108 KB	Download	V 1.01
6	AmbarUbhri.ttf (A 3D Gurmukhi Unicode font)	116 KB	Download	V 1.01
7	AmbarSlim.ttf (A slim version of AnmolUni type of Gurmukhi Unicode font)	76 KB	Download	V 1.01
8	ChatrikUni.ttf (A regular Gurmukhi Unicode font with slightly reduced white space)	80 KB	Download	V 1.01

9	Akaash.ttf (A Gurmukhi Unicode font that also contains English characters)	100 KB	Download	V 1.01
10	Akaash-Bold.ttf (This font is a bold version of Akaash font)	100 KB	Download	V 1.01
11	AmbarLight.ttf (A ligher version of AnmolUni type of Gurmukhi Unicode font)	80 KB	Download	V 1.01
12	AmbarLight-Bold.ttf (a bold version of AmbarLight)	76 KB	Download	V 1.01
13	AmbarShadow.ttf (an outlined Ambar font with shadow)	134 KB	Download	V 1.01

14	DOWNLOAD ALL (1 TO 13) AS ONE ZIP FILE	708 KB	Download	V 1.01

1	Punjabi_Gurmukhi Unicode keyboard based on AnmolLipi (a zip file). Updated on Feb 24, 2007	428 KB	Download
2	Gurmukhi Unicode keyboard based on DrChatrikWeb font (this keyboard layout is made by: Amrinder Singh Sandhu) Updated on Feb. 24, 2007	356 KB	Download
3	Punjabi Unicode keyboard based on Asees font (a zip file). It is based on Ramington Punjabi typewriter keyboard layout	76 KB	Download