Using Devanagri package in latex

Question

I want to write in hindi in latex

मेरे माता और पिता को समर्पित|

I am using devanagri package and I want to put this in the document using the command {\dn .............}. If somebody can translate the above lines in Devanagari then i can put these in in the blank and get it to work. Also, if there i a tool readily available like google translate, it will be helpful if someone can point out

Answer 1

Short answer: For the text in the question, you can use:

{\dn m\?r\? mAtA aOr EptA ko smEp\0t.}

Longer answer follows.

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Recommended way (XeTeX and Unicode font)

In general, to type Devanagari in (La)TeX, it is best to use a Unicode-aware engine like XeTeX [or LuaTeX, but LuaTeX's support for Indic (and most non-Latin) scripts is rather poor]. For example, you can just compile the following with xelatex:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\hindifont{Noto Sans Devanagari}[Script=Devanagari] % Use any Devanagari font on your system

\begin{document}
This is Latin script and {\hindifont यह है देवनागरी}.
\end{document}

or for better results if you have a lot of Hindi text, it is recommended to use the polyglossia package too (for things like hyphenation and other language-specific rules):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia} % Automatically loads fontspec
\setmainlanguage{english}
\setotherlanguages{hindi}
\newfontfamily\hindifont{Noto Sans Devanagari}[Script=Devanagari] % Use any Devanagari font on your system

\begin{document}
This is Latin script and \texthindi{यह है देवनागरी}.
\end{document}

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Deprecated but still working way (non-Unicode font)

If for some reason you cannot use XeTeX, then you can use the old devanagari package. This requires two passes. First, you type everything into a .dn (not .tex) file, with the Devanagari parts inside {\dn ...}, using Velthuis encoding for the Devanagari text. (Invoke texdoc velthuis to read the manual for details.) Then you run devnag on this .dn file, to create a .tex file. Then you compile this .tex file.

For example, for the text in the question, you can create a .dn file with:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{devanagari}

\begin{document}
This is English. {\dn mere maataa aura pitaa ko samarpita|} English again.
\end{document}

Then running devnag file on this .dn file produces the following .tex file:

\def\DevnagVersion{2.17}\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{devanagari}

\begin{document}
This is English. {\dn m\?r\? mAtA aOr EptA ko smEp\0t.} English again.
\end{document}

Now you can compile this file with say pdflatex, to get:

Tools

• To go from the Devanagari to the required Velthuis transliteration (e.g. from मेरे माता और पिता को समर्पित to {\dn mere maataa aura pitaa ko samarpita}, you can use this tool I wrote a long time ago (or just learn the conventions from the documentation and type it manually).
• To go from the .dn file to the .tex file, you need the devnag processor installed, which comes with TeX Live. If you're using a different distribution, it may be under a different name, or you may have to compile it yourself.
• To go directly from Devanagari to the \dn convention and skip the previous two steps (e.g. from मेरे माता और पिता को समर्पित to {\dn m\?r\? mAtA aOr EptA ko smEp\0t.}, you may be able to use the Python script I wrote for another answer a few months ago.