Hindi DTP Glossary
Confused by technical printing terminology? Use this glossary to understand the core concepts behind Hindi typography, Unicode, and legacy DTP operations.
- ASCII Font (Legacy Font)
- Fonts built before Unicode, such as Walkman Chanakya or Kruti Dev. They do not contain actual Hindi characters encoded in the system; rather, they replace standard English letters on your screen with Hindi shapes.
- Conjunct (Samyuktakshar)
- A character formed by combining two or more consonants. For example, 'क्' and 'य' combine to form 'क्य'.
- Halant (Virama)
- A diagonal stroke (्) beneath a consonant that removes its inherent 'a' vowel, turning it into a half-letter.
- Matra
- The dependent vowel signs in Devanagari script. The most problematic matra in typography is the 'Chhoti Ee' (ि) because it must be typed before the consonant in legacy fonts but after the consonant in Unicode.
- Reph
- A crescent-like mark placed above a consonant (like in 'कर्म'). It represents a half 'r' sound that is pronounced before the consonant it sits on.
- Unicode
- The modern, universal encoding standard where every character in every language has a unique, standardized digital number. Fonts like Mangal and Gautami are Unicode fonts.