A few months back I bought myself a macbook pro. Really i think it was a good decision. I am very happy with the quality of hardware and some of the cool features that Mac OS X Tiger offers. So today while I was browsing, I came across webdunia.com. It publishes it’s content in 9 different Indian languages including Hindi, my mother tounge. I was using Firefox 2.0.07 and all I could see on the site was images and ????. All the hindi text appeared as question marks. I immediately thought that hindi fonts are not installed. I decided to install the font set to see my favourite curvy characters. I search very hard on the internet, googling this afternoon to get Hindi working on my Mac. But to no avail.
After my evening tea I sat again and decided to give it another try. But this time to my surprise I could read everything without doing anything. I had no clue what was going on. Then I realised I was using Safari, the pre installed browser. After some more search on net I came to know that Indic rendering of Firefox on Mac OS X is not up to the mark yet, but is perfect on Safari.
To sum up:
On Safari with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger the handling of Indian scripts is amazingly flawless.
On Firefox unfortunately as of today Indian scripts can’t be rendered well enough.
If you wish to type in Hindi:
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy switching
And this is how to write word Hindi using hindi script
September 28, 2007 at 5:38 pm
I agree – Safari and Apple Mail do a great job of rendering Hindi/Devanagari pages with no problem. I have researched this also in great detail to get things working with Firefox – but no luck so far.
November 6, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Hi! I need help! I have to do subtitles for ad industrial video in Hindi, and the MacPro that I use at work doesn’t have some characters. Can you suggest me how to do?
Thank you very much and sorry for my english!
PS can you write me and e-mail? Thanks!
November 7, 2007 at 11:29 am
misterkiwi, on the installlation disk no.2 that comes with Mac there are all the fonts available. Please try to install the hindi fonts from there.
November 17, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Anubhav,
Thanks for your entry. It was most illuminating. Have you figured out how to actually type contracted letters? For example my last name is gupta and to be written correctly in hindi, the pa and ga are joined. How do you accomplish this? I have a very rudimentary knowledge of written hindi as I have never lived in India. I am trying to improve this and also want to type some hindu prayers so that I can play with them graphically.
Thanks!
Atul
November 23, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Thank you for the help in clicking on International and choosing the Devanagari font. But I don’t see how to have it appear in Word, or in any actual application.
Also, do you–or does anyone– know any programs that would help me learn to type in Hindi?
Many thanks,
Susan
November 27, 2007 at 5:43 am
@atul – the way to type the joint letters is to use the visarga i.e, to get gupta in hindi, you would type gupfta (the “f” between “p” and ‘t” will give you the desired result गुप्ता). All half/joined letters can be produced this way! All the inline hindi text on my website has been done like this. Please email me if you would like more help.
@susan – select “devanagari qwerty” as your keyboard, open textedit and type away! (do install Devanagari MT font)
Kumud
December 7, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Am currently studying Hindi at the Landour Language School in Mussoorie, Uttarkhand, India. Am transcribing most of my lesson notes onto my MacBook. This is really quite easy, but have found that TextEdit is the best for the Devanagari/English data entry. Unfortunately I find Word impossible, and Pages flaky especially in tabbing. Want to try out some of the alternate word processing programs…any suggestions out there? Am concerned that I’ll have problems with TextEdit when I come to printouts and more advanced formatting.
December 8, 2007 at 12:40 am
There are some good word processing softwares available for Mac OSX. I think Dan for you, Mellel will be a good alternative. Check this link
Some other alternatives are Apple’s iWork, Mariner Write
December 12, 2007 at 7:17 am
Hi Kumud,
I selected “Devanagari QWERTY” as my keyboard, and then opened Textedit, selected DevanagariMT as the font, and then started to type, but still wasn’t able to get the Hindi font to appear. The keyboard would still input the same English characters. Is there anything that I still need to do?
Thanks for all your help!
Sarvesh
December 28, 2007 at 7:22 pm
@Sarvesh – what version of MacOS X are you using? Please email ajmanik at gmail dot com if you are using 10.4+ and it still does not work for you.
January 27, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I actually forgot if one needs to install the fonts from the disk on Tiger, or just the System Preferences setup I mentioned here is enough? Perhaps I did install them after all, but if any of you remembers do let me know.
February 3, 2008 at 12:13 am
You can also download Padma from the Firefox add-on site. See: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/873 and it works great!
March 1, 2008 at 5:29 am
hi anubhav
it seems helpful while visiting ur site.
i want to get more information on topic “how to read hindi fonts on client’s machine without installing it”
please guide me thoroughly.
June 3, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Hi Anubhavjee,
I have recently bought a mac with OSX Leopard (10.5.2). As per you suggestion regarding hindi font and reading/writing , I did something like this (as u have suggested):
If you wish to type in Hindi:
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy ”
I am still not able to read/write . Could you suggest me what to do next?
Thanking you in anticipation!
Regards,
vs
October 5, 2009 at 6:45 pm
is it possible to download virtual Hindi keypad, i mean typing by using mouse
October 11, 2008 at 10:33 pm
hi everybody,
i would like to know please if someone wanna help me how to write my name in Hindi:
baptiste
If someone know also how to write my name in the different dialects.
Sincerely
much appreciated
baptiste
November 16, 2008 at 2:12 am
Anubhav,
While the Devanagri QWERTY keyboard works for all Mac apps. I am on version 10.5.5. I am not able to use this on Microsoft Office for Mac version 2008. Any ideas on how i can type in Hindi in Microsoft Office for Mac?
Regards
Raghu
December 3, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I am having problems with typing certain samyoga characters in devanagari on Mac. For e.g. when I type arjuna, the j disappears. Anyone knows how to fix this or where I can seek help?
Soon after I type the u in ju, the j disappears:
अर् जुन
अर्जुन
thanks
February 4, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Hi All could i get a help of someone who can show me the script in hindi for Welcome
April 9, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I am using Mac OSX 10.4.11 and have been trying to type some Sanskrit prayers with Devanagari (Querty). I am having some success but can someone please tell me how to do the following:
1) how do I get the aspirated letters like bh, gh, dh
2) other letters also I can’t find like the other sh, or the other n or the vowel r that would be used to spell Krishna. What is the procedure for those letters?
3) words beginning with a vowel like Upanishad. Is there a way to get the letter U by itself.
4)how do I get the visarga as in namah
5) how do I get the bindi?
If someone can help me with this I would be really grateful. Thanks!
Regards,
Kelly
April 9, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I am using Mac OSX 10.4.11 and have been trying to type some Sanskrit prayers with Devanagari (Querty). I am having some success but can someone please tell me how to do the following:
1) how do I get the aspirated letters like bh, gh, dh
2) other letters also I can’t find like the other sh, or the other n or the vowel r that would be used to spell Krishna. What is the procedure for those letters?
3) words beginning with a vowel like Upanishad. Is there a way to get the letter U by itself.
4)how do I get the visarga as in namah
5) how do I get the bindi?
If someone can help me with this I would be really grateful. Thanks!
Regards,
Kelly
June 18, 2009 at 2:53 am
I had been wanting to experiment with hindi / devnagiri typing on my new MacBook Pro for quite some time now… and your post was extremely spot on…
In order to learn the different keyboard keys to type better, you need to check the box for ‘Keyboard Viewer’ which under the Input tab. Then, you can see a menu item called ‘Show Keyboard Viewer’ which then shows you a mini keyboard on the screen – thus helping you to type better and to figure out which keys are for what alphabet… in fact, you can even type out your stuff from that keyboard itself too…
Thanks for posting this information!
October 5, 2009 at 6:48 pm
thanks hope this will help me
August 31, 2009 at 5:25 am
Kelly, not sure if you got your answers. Since I didn’t see them in the posts, here it goes –
do?
भ (bh) – shift b
घ (gh) – shift g
ध (dh) – shift d
ष (sh) – x
ण (other N) – shift n
कृ (r as in krishna) – shift r
उ (U as in Upanishad) – Alt U (don’t know second U)
: (visarg) – would colon (shift
Devanagari-QWERTY works good for most of the letters but haven’t figured out how to type ठ (Th) or ढ (Dh) yet. I don’t see these letters even in the Keyboard viewer. I can type those using just Devanagari layout but QWERTY layout is really easy for somebody like me who is new to Devanagari typing. Would appreciate if any body can help with this.
Regards,
Rajgopal
September 8, 2009 at 8:33 pm
trying to type devanagari on word for mac. works perfect in text edit, but can’t find a font for word. any advice?
and
ठ tha is (shift-alt)t
ढ dha is (shift-alt)d
visarga ः (shift)h
ऋ r (alt)r
ऋृ longr (alt)r then (shift)r
r symbol for krsna ृ (shift)r कृ
उu (alt)u
ऊ longu (alt-shift)u
hope that helps…
September 11, 2009 at 5:02 am
So I successfully used the above technique (insert ‘F’ between letters) to get joint letters.
However, I can’t figure out how to type out फ (the hindi letter for F) unless I paste it directly from the character palette
Would prefer a solution for Devanagari-QWERTY.
Any help would be appreciated.
September 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Hi Shrey,
You can get it if you type (shift) p = फ on Devnagari – QWERTY.
Hope this helps.
September 21, 2009 at 8:23 am
1) Go to System Preferences
2) Click on International
3) Click on the Input tab and select Devanagari and/or Devanagari-QWERTY
4) Check the Show Input Menu in Menu Bar for easy switching
i have tried doing the same for hindi reading on mac..its still not coming..i dont want to type anything..i just want to read hindi material available on web..how would that be possible?plz help
September 21, 2009 at 9:32 am
Simply view the site on Safari. Safari by default display hindi text. Hope this helps
October 1, 2009 at 8:16 am
some fonts override eachother when i open a web page. Is there anything to correct with font book or font folder ?