Information on enabling reading and writing Hindi on your computer/browzer

आशीष गर्ग के ब्लॉग में आपका स्वागत है

If you can read the above welcome message in Hindi, then your computer is ready for Hindi. Enjoy. If not, please follow the instructions given below to install support for Hindi. Normally Windows includes support for Hindi but it may need to be installed which is quite easy and should take only a few seconds. In the case of Unix/Linux, it may be slightly more complicated.

Installing support for Hindi on your computer

Note: You must have IE (version 5.5 or above), or Netscape (version 4 or above) or latest versions of any of the other browsers like Opera, Mozilla etc. which support unicode.If you face any problems in following these instructions, feel free to contact me at a.garg.98@cantab.net. Before reading or typing Hindi, please make sure that encoding of the browzer is set to UTF-8 (Go to View-->Encoding-->UTF-8). Also, you may need your operating system's CD during some of the following operations.

Please select your operating system, for the appropriate section :-

Windows 2000

Windows XP

Windows 98/95

Linux/Unix


Windows 2000

Good Solution:

Enable support for Indian languages on your computer. Windows 2000 has inbuilt Indian languages features. If you enable these features, you will be able to view the Hindi pages much better.
1. Go to Settings (Start Button)
2. Go to Control Panel
3. Go to Regional Options
4. In "Language settings for the system" (in the first "General" tab), select Indic.
5. Click OkYou should be able to view the Hindi text on this site now.

Easier Solution:

Download these fonts (Raghindi by NCST) and install them (help on installing fonts). You should be able to view the hindi text on this site now.


Windows XP

Good Solution:

Enable support for Indian languages (Indic) on your computer. Windows XP has inbuilt Indian languages features. If you enable these features, you will be able to view the Hindi pages much better. You must have at least 10 MB of free hard disk space. Before starting, please close any open programs.
1. Go to Control Panel (from the “Start” button)
2. Go to Regional and Language Options.
3. Click the “Languages” tab.
4. Check (click) the line marked “Install files for complex scripts and right to left languages (including Thai)”

When you check this line, a new window will appear, which will give a list of languages that will be installed. This list will include ‘Indic’. It will ‘warn’ you that you need at least 10 MB of hard disk space. Click OK to close this window. Then click OK on the Regional and Languages Options window. You will be asked to restart your computer.You should be able to view the Hindi text on this site now.

Easier Solution:

Download these fonts (Raghindi by NCST) and install them (help on installing fonts). You should be able to view the hindi text on this site now.

Windows 98/95

Download these fonts (Raghindi by NCST) and install them (help on installing fonts). You should be able to view the hindi text on this site now.

Linux/Unix

Download and build the free Saraswati font available from Sun.You should then be able to view the hindi text on this site from the latest versions of Mozilla.If you are able to provide better and easier step-by-step instructions for enabling viewing of hindi webpages on Linux/Unix systems, please do send the instructions to us.

How to install the font :(only for Windows systems)

Download the raghu.zip file and extract in a particular directory on your hard disk. Say, the root directory "c:\raghu" Go to Start-Settings-Control Panel In Control Panel, open "Fonts" Select the file raghu.ttf from where you extracted the zip file and drag and drop it into the Control Panel Fonts window.



Tools and methods of writting in Hindi (Unicode way)

On-Line Hindi keyboard (free)

Takhti_a hindi writting software (free)

Aksharamala