Chandas (typeface)

Chandas

Designer(s)	Mihail Bayaryn
Sample

Chandas is an OpenType Font for the Devanagari script released under the GNU General Public License. The font contains over 4,000 individual glyphs and supports a very extensive set of conjunct ligatures. Though this font was primarily designed for writing Sanskrit, it may be used for all languages written in the Devanagari script, including Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. The font was developed and is maintained by Mihail Bayaryn.

Chandas is notable in that it supports many more matras (conjuct ligatures) than most other Devanagari fonts. It also supports Vedic accents unavailable in other Devanagri fonts. Both these features are particularly useful in setting Sandkrit texts.

The Chandas font "contains 4347 glyphs: 325 half-forms, 960 half-forms context-variations, 2743 ligature-signs.".^[1] This font is therefore useful for those who want to see old Sanskrit texts in their original form. "It is designed especially for Vedic and Classical Sanskrit but can also be used for Hindi, Nepali and other modern Indian languages. The font includes Vedic accents and many additional signs and provides maximal support for Devanagari script."^[2]

The Chandas font has a companion font called Uttara. While the Chandas font had glyphs in the Southern (Bombay) style of Devanagari script which is the most commonly used today, the Uttara font has glyphs which follow the old Northern or Calcutta style of Devanagari Script.

Format and License

The Chandas font is available in OpenType format using TrueType outlines. It is distributed under the terms of the Gnu General Public Licence. It may be downloaded from the SanskritWeb.net site. The VOLT project files containing the source of the OpenType lookups in the font are also available.

The font is included in several Linux distributions.

References

1. ^ http://www.sanskritweb.net/cakram/
2. ^ http://www.sanskritweb.net/cakram/

Related links

• Sanskrit
• Devanagari
• Unicode
• Vedas

External links

• Chandas font