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<p>Hi Niranjan,</p>
<p>I ran into similar problems when I wrote my mediawiki2latex
programm to convert Wikipedia Pages to LaTeX. I faced many
different symbols from many different languages. Devanagari was
one of them. In the end I now use xelatex and many different
fonts, and switch between them using fontspec commands during the
course of the LaTeX document. I am quite happy with that solution.
My program writes the LaTeX file to disk, and while writing it
looks for possible fonts for the next character and switches the
font if necessary. In the early days of my development I used
pdflatex instead. I generated my own ttf font for the 16 bit
unicode range by mixing from different existing fonts and
recalculated the kerning. I could somehow pass that font to
pdflatex and get results that way, the file are still available on
mediawiki2latex sourceforge page, but I do not recommend to use
them. I suggest to use xelatex instead. With the pdflatex approach
I remember a limit 256 character per "font part", so I also had to
do some switching there. It made me remember old daisy wheel
printers, just that the computer was replacing the wheel
automatically and I did have to do it by hand.</p>
<p>Yours Dirk<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/3/19 7:48 AM, निरंजन wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAM_DS2nrd218AynEDm1uH5NQvHp81x5dEZFvU_3FHeEtg--Jug@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>Hello all,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Let me begin with the primary declaration that I've a very
little knowledge of how TeX works, I have some requests
regarding the compiler. Please correct me if I have understood
something wrong.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left"><a
href="http://www.tug.org/FontCatalogue/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">This</a> is a link which I found for
LaTeX fonts. This collection does not include Devanagari
fonts. Devanagari is a script which has dedicated Unicode
numbers which can be found <a
href="https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0900.pdf"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">here</a>. I've
attached three zip files namely Yashovenu, Yashomudra and
Jaini. Yashovenu is a free and open source font (<a
href="https://github.com/RajyaMarathiVikasSanstha/Yashovenu"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">project link</a>)
which is Sans Serif by style. Yashomudra is the serif version
of the same font. No need to mention that it is also free and
open source (<a
href="https://github.com/RajyaMarathiVikasSanstha/Yashomudra"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">project link</a>).
Both of these fonts are available in all the weights. Jaini is
an old style Devanagari font (again open source, <a
href="https://github.com/EkType/Jaini" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">this</a> is the project link).
Unfortunately this font is not available in all the weights,
but it contains one variant named Jaini-Purva which is an even
older style of Devanagari script.</div>
<div style="text-align:left"><br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">The point of mentioning all of this
is Devanagari is a completely computer-friendly script. Is it
possible to include at least these four fonts in the TeXLive
distribution as the representatives of Devanagari script? The
purpose would be a step towards localization of LaTeX project.
Right now if Devanagari is to be used in LaTeX, one has to
load fontspec or polyglossia or other packages like these and
compile the document with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX. Consider this
as a feature request for making PdfLaTeX also able to compile
Devanagari characters in input and giving output in some
default Devanagari fonts. (Preferably the attached one.) My
idea would be to have simple commands like <b>\fontstyle</b>
with following options of (compulsory) arguments -<br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">
<ol>
<li>"\sansserif" - (Yashovenu)</li>
<li>"\serif" - (Yashomudra)</li>
<li>"\olddeva" - (Jaini)</li>
<li>"\traditionaldeva - (Jaini Purva)</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">Please let me know if I can help
you in any ways. If there are some technical (or TeXnical)
problems, please make me aware of the same. I would be very
happy to work for this small step of localization if needed.</div>
<div style="text-align:left"><br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">Waiting for your response.</div>
<div style="text-align:left"><br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">Regards,</div>
<div style="text-align:left">Niranjan</div>
<div style="text-align:left">Department of Linguistics,<br>
</div>
<div style="text-align:left">University of Mumbai.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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