How can I type in Devnagari font using LaTeX?

Question

I'm new to LaTeX and I'm trying to learn it. It is very interesting. I have to type a lot of documents that contain Devnagari text, more precisely Nepali Language. How can I type it using LaTeX, so that I could make beautiful document in my own language?

I recommend using XeTeX. Have a look at: Getting Started to XeTeX for Devanagari. — Stefan Kottwitz, Dec 29 '11 at 18:04
Please let us know by a comment if the answers in the linked question solved your question too. We would close this question as a duplicate then. — Stefan Kottwitz, Dec 29 '11 at 18:37
Still looking for the solution - it would have been nice if we could natively write Nepali in tex studio without going to Sanskrit and translate it. — SL4566, Aug 03 '21 at 01:08

Jay · Answer 1 · 2014-10-26T10:02:51.427

4

You could use Charles Wikner's Sanskrit package, available from CTAN. With this package, you would enter transliterated text and it would be converted into Devanagari (it does ligatures properly if I remember correctly).

The documentation is in the file sktdoc.ps.

edit: in Debian and Ubuntu, the same package used to be available with the name "latex-sanskrit", but was removed from the archives (I don't know the reason)

edited Oct 26 '14 at 10:02

answered Dec 30 '11 at 14:20

Jay

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Stefan Kottwitz's answer (xelatex) in the comments above is better - you can type directly in Devanagari and don't have to do intermediate transliteration through the Latin script. – Sameer Nov 17 '14 at 08:55
Some people actually need to type the transliteration -- it's used by western Sanskrit scholars, for example. – Jay Nov 17 '14 at 10:54
1

Of course, transliteration would be better for western Sanskrit scholars. But here the question refers to "my own language", so I am assuming typing directly in Devanagari would be more convenient. – Sameer Nov 20 '14 at 19:42

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 03 '21 at 14:31

babel provides partial support for Nepali in XeTeX and LuaTeX, but you may need to supply the captions yourself. An example for LuaTeX is (I've used a Windows font, but you can select another font of your choice):

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[nepali, provide=*]{babel}
\babelprovide[mapdigits]{nepali}
\babelfont{rm}[Renderer=Harfbuzz]{Sanskrit Text}
\setlocalecaption{nepali}{chapter}{अध्याय}
\begin{document}
\chapter{नेपाल}
नेपाल (आधिकारिक नाम: सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल) दक्षिण एशियाली
भूपरिवेष्ठित हिमाली राष्ट्र हो। नेपालको पूर्वी सीमाना मेची नदी देखि
पश्चिमी सीमाना महाकाली नदीसम्मको औसत लम्बाइ ८८५ किलोमिटर छ।
\end{document}

How can I type in Devnagari font using LaTeX?

2 Answers2