Saab

Saab is the first ever freely available, Unicode 4.0 compliant, OpenType, Gurmukhi (Punjabi) font. The creation of this font was a combined effort by Bhupinder Singh and Sukhjinder Sidhu to help encourage the use of Punjabi online. This web site serves as the official download point for Saab.

Licence Terms

Saab is released under the GNU General Public Licence, with the following exception:
"As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. "

Download

NOTE: Since we launched version 1.0, we have noticed many problems. Until these problems are corrected, please download version 0.91.

Installation

To install this font under Windows, you should download and run the font installer. If you are unable to use the font, you should reboot your PC for the changes to take effect. Alternatively, you can extract the zip file, and manually place the font into your font directory (usually "C:\Windows\Fonts").
For other operating systems, you should extract the contents of the zip file into your system's font directory and perform any additional operations as required. Please consult your user documentation for further details.

Redistribution

You are allowed to redistribute this font on your own web sites as you please. However, if you are distributing the font with your own software, the software MUST comply with the GNU General Public Licence. If your software is not GNU GPL compliant, you MUST licence the font individually for your own needs by contacting us.
To save your own bandwidth costs, and to keep your users up-to-date with the latest version of Saab, we recommend that you link directly to this page.

Feedback

Saab is constantly being updated and improved. We welcome all comments - especially bug reports. If you have anything to say, please contact us.

AnmolUni

A set of fonts developed by Dr Thind as eventual replacements for the proprietary encoded AnmolLipi fonts.

AnmolUni and AnmolUniBani are a set of fonts developed by Dr Thind as eventual replacements for the proprietary encoded AnmolLipi fonts. AnmolUni is fully compliant with Unicode 4.0. AnmolUniBani incorporates all features of Unicode 4.0 but also includes additional characters required for older Gurmukhi. They are both identical typefaces.

You should be aware that any of the additions in AnmolUniBani are as of yet not in the Unicode standard. These may one day be included in the standard in the form used in AnmolUniBani or in other forms. You take a risk that your data will not be fully compatible with future releases of Unicode when using the AnmolUniBani fonts.

AnmolUniBani

AnmolUniBani uses several additional conjuncts not recognised by the Unicode standard. It also
uses multiple conjoined consonants to represent alternative forms of conjuncts (e.g. Pari Haha and Udaat). The
use of multiple cojoined consonants is a customised addition to this font and are extremely unlikely to ever
be encoded in the Unicode standard.

Also included in this font is a dual vowel sign symbol in the Private Use Area. This represents a combined Hora
and Onkar. All other non-conventional forms of Gurmukhi can be accommodated using a combination of ZWS, ZWJ and ZWNJ.

AnmolUniBani Features

The following four situations are recognised by the Unicode standard:

The following situations are accurate conjoined forms and may be accepted into the Unicode standard at a later date:

The following two conjoined forms are alternative versions of the ones listed above. They are implemented by adding double conjuncts and are unlikely to be accepted into the Unicode standard.

The Unicode Private Use Area contains a Hora and Onkar combined vowel sign:

Licence Terms

AnmolUni and AnmolUniBani are released under the GNU General Public Licence.

Download

AnmolUni Version 1.40
Zip File

AnmolUniBani Version 1.40
Zip File

Automatic Installer
This program will automatically install both AnmolUni and AnmolUniBani and all variants.

Installer

Installation

Details coming soon...

Redistribution

You are allowed to redistribute this font on your own web sites as you please. However, if you are distributing the font with your own software, the software MUST comply with the GNU General Public Licence.

Feedback

AnmolUni and AnmolUniBani are constantly being updated and improved. Although these fonts were not developed by us directly, we were involved heavily in resolving compatibility issues. If you have anything to say, please contact us.

Lohit Punjabi

Lohit Punjabi is a font developed in conjunction with Red Hat to help increase Indic support on Linux.

The latest version fixes many problems. If you are still using version 1.0, please upgrade.

Licence Terms

Lohit Punjabi is released under the GNU General Public Licence.

Download

Version 1.1
Zip File | Regular Font File

Installation

Details coming soon...

Redistribution

You are allowed to redistribute this font on your own web sites as you please. However, if you are distributing the font with your own software, the software MUST comply with the GNU General Public Licence.

Feedback

This font is unconnected with the PCRC. Feedback for this font should be directed towards RedHat.

Third-party Fonts

A look at fonts provided by other sources.

The use of Punjabi online - especially using Unicode - has only just started to take-off. As such, there are very few Unicode Gurmukhi fonts available. This page lists all known third-party Gurmukhi fonts.

We also provide free, Unicode 4.0 Gurmukhi fonts not listed on this page.

Notes

Gurmukhi compatibility varies depending on the Unicode version. Gurmukhi has been present in Unicode since version 1.1. Unicode 4.0 adds U+0A01 (Adak Bindi) and U+0A03 (Visarga).

Arial Unicode MS

Version: 1.01

Gurmukhi Compatibility: 1.1

This is a huge font - over 22MB in size. It contains complete coverage for Unicode 2.1. Due to its vast size, it is not recommended for widespread use because its size can make it slow and difficult to transport. It is designed to fill in blanks when other fonts cannot represent certain glyphs.

This font is not available to download and comes packaged with various Microsoft products.

Code 2000

Version: 1.14

Gurmukhi Compatibility: 4.0

This is a large (6MB) shareware font. Like Arial Unicode MS, it support a vast range of Unicode characters. It is shareware and costs $5 to register.

Download it from James Kass's web site.

Raavi

Version: 1.06

Gurmukhi Compatibility: 1.1

Raavi is arguably the best quality commercial Gurmukhi font available. It is a general purpose font and is suited for web page and application use.

This font is not available to download and comes packaged with various Microsoft products, including Microsoft Windows XP.

Saraswati 5

Version: 2003-01-17

Gurmukhi Compatibility: 1.1 (No conjuncts or OpenType tables)

Contains the basic glyphs for Gurmukhi but does not contain OpenType tables and so is not fully compatible. However, some systems may be able to make use of characters in the private use area.

Available from the Sun Download Centre. Requires free registration.

Compare Fonts

The images below can be used to visually compare different type faces.

AnmolUni

Arial Unicode MS

Code 2000

Lohit Punjabi

Raavi

Saab

Phonetic Gurmukhi Punjabi Layout

The Punjabi Computing Resource Centre has extensively designed and tested a new phonetic keyboard layout in conjunction with the Punjabi Linux Team. This layout combines the advantages of of both Inscript and standard font based layouts while removing their limitations.

Features

• A largely phonetic layout without combined keys such as Kanna + Bindi.
• Where appropriate, statistically higher used characters are in the main key state. Lesser used characters are in the shift state.
• Dead keys to remove the need to use pre-composed independent vowels. For example:
  • ਅ + 'ੈ' = ਐ
  • ੳ + 'ੋ' = ਓ
• Enter a space after a dead key to get the standalone form of a character (Ura, Aira or Iri).
• Removal of all Pairin Bindi characters – a single Pairin Bindi (Nukta) key is used instead.
• Standard Latin punctuation in addition to Danda and Double Danda.
• Unicode rendering engines automatically position vowel signs (matras) and other symbols correctly. There is no need for special versions of ਨੂੰ and other words.
• Latin numbers (0-9) are available via the number pad without changing layouts.
• Pairin characters such as Pairin Rara and Pairin Haha are written using the Halant key (F) followed by the full form of the character. For example, Pairin Rara is written '੍' + ਰ.

Layout

Based on US Qwerty

Based on UK Qwerty

Installation

Extract the ZIP file below and run the ".msi" installer. Once the installer has completed, make sure the Gurmukhi keyboard is selected for the Punjabi language.

Download

There are keyboard layouts based on both UK and US Qwerty keyboards. They differ only in the positioning of Latin punctuation. Select the appropriate keyboard:

Phonetic Keyboard (US)
Zip File

Phonetic Keyboard (UK)
Zip File