Gujarati

Recommended Fonts | Keyboard Layouts | Mac vs. PC Rendering Issues | Credits

Recommended Fonts

The SALRC recommends the following fonts for Gujarati language pedagogy and Internet applications:

[Click on font names or samples for specific information and text samples for each font.]

Arial Unicode MS (arialuni.ttf)

A commercial font available as part of Microsoft's Office 2000/XP, FrontPage 2000, and Publisher 2002. To access this font, the 'International Support' feature must be installed. See Microsoft support for more details.

Font Image

Shruti (shruti.ttf)

Commercial font included in Microsoft Windows XP and Office XP.

Note: In order to use this font, "Supplemental Language Support" must be activated. See either Microsoft's support for XP, or click on "How to Install Fonts and Layouts" in the left navigation bar.

Font Image

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Input Software and Keyboard Layouts

For typing in Gujarati on Windows platforms, the SALRC recommends the following options:

  • Windows 2000/XP Keyboard Layouts: Microsoft Windows XP and 2000 offer full keyboard support as a part of multilingual support. The Gujarati keyboard layout may be accessed through Control Panel > System > Languages, and is an optional installation (Click on "How to Install Fonts and Layouts" in the left navigation bar for more information). The keyboard may be viewed with the On-screen Keyboard Viewer (Start > Program Files > Utilities > Accessibility > On Screen Keyboard). See Microsoft's Keyboard Layouts page to view various layouts available for Windows XP/2000/Server 2003. Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator allows the user to create a new keyboard, if the default keyboard layout is undesirable.
  • Babu Suthar has developed a phonetic Gujarati keyboard for Windows that can be downloaded from his website.
  • Gujarati Indic IME: Microsoft's BhashaIndia site provides a set of phonetic input method editors (IMEs), compatible with Windows 2000/XP, for Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil. The IME is a separate application that must be run alongside Microsoft Office software. Note: The IMEs are designed specifically for MS Office, and do not necessarily function with other software.
  • OpenOffice.org: A free, open-source office suite project that is Unicode-savvy, OpenType enabled, and able to run on Linux/Sparc, Mac OS X (with X11), and all modern Windows platforms, including Windows 95.

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Rendering issues: Mac vs. PC vs. Linux

The fonts recommended on this page have been tested for functionality on PCs running Windows XP/2000/2003/NT. They are unsuitable for use with Macintosh computers, because they make use of OpenType technology, developed jointly by Microsoft and Adobe, for displaying vowel signs (matras) and ligatures appropriately. While OS X also recognizes OpenType layout tables, it uses a different rendering engine (ATSUI); the above fonts are written for Microsoft's engine (called Uniscribe).

For Gujarati computing, Mac users (OS X 10.3 and above) are advised to install the optional Asian Languages Support package, found in the OS X installation CD/DVD. This will install the "Gujarati MT" font, and enable Gujarati and Gujarati-QWERTY keyboards. The user will now be able to view Gujarati-encoded websites using Safari and to produce Unicode documents using TextEdit. Unfortunately, other third-party browsers and word processing software do not currently recognize this font.

These fonts are compatible with most distributions of Linux running Gnome or KDE. Most major distributions also offer or include free Gurjati-language packages, which include keyboards and fonts.

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Additional Resources and Credits

The content and design of this page rely largely Alan Wood's Unicode Fonts and WAZU JAPAN's Gallery of Unicode Fonts; these sites are excellent and up-to-date resources to find fonts, text editors, browsers, and other Unicode resources. The statistics and other font details appearing on this page have been used with their permission. Visit Penn State's South Asian Computing Information pages for additonal Unicode support. Avaneesh Bhatt (University of Chicago) has provided invaluable assistance and advice in the creation of this page.

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