Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Problems writing in Nepali script (Devanagri) on your computer?

I ran into a strange problem the other day, writing Nepali script in OpenOffice. Now solved it, sort of. Here's the story:

I've been messing around with Nepali texts on my computer, still working on learning and improving my Nepali. For that purpose I've found it quite useful to copy Nepalese text from the internet and working a bit on them offline. Transcribing, translating etc. So, to do that, what do you need?

First, check if you have proper fonts installed. Some of the Nepali fonts I've been using are Preeti, Xdvng and Mangal. I think the Mangal font is probably the best of those 3 Nepali fonts. If you don't have them, just Google it and download from somewhere...

Choose one of these fonts and you should be able to write things like
खाने (khane = to eat)

जित्ने (jitne = to win)


हार्ने (harne = to loose)


However, I ran into problems when I tried to copy-paste from my internet-browser (Firefox) into an Open Office document. Even with the font working seemingly fine when writing, it didn't work when I tried to copy a text into the document.  And since that's what I was trying to do, it was kind of annoying! I tried a lot of different settings and options in OpenOffice, but I couldn't get around it. The conclusion is, for Nepali (copy-pasting), don't use Open Office! A shame, since it's an otherwise really good - and free - text editor! It just doesn't work in this situation. If you have a solution, please write it here, below. Otherwise, I can just advise you to use another editor, e.g. Microsoft Word or even the simple Windows Notepad will do!!