Preeti to Unicode Converter
Convert Nepali text typed in Preeti, Kantipur and other legacy fonts into standard Unicode.
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How to Use
- 1Choose the font the text was typed in (Preeti for most documents).
- 2Paste the text; it looks like random English letters, which is expected.
- 3Copy the Unicode result that appears below.
Features
- Supports Preeti, Kantipur, Sagarmatha and Himalb
- Converts live as you paste
- Handles conjuncts, reph (र्) and vowel-sign ordering
- Warns when text is already Unicode
- No upload, 100% in-browser
Example
Input
g]kfn Ps ;'Gb/ b]z xf] .
Output
नेपाल एक सुन्दर देश हो ।
Convert Nepali text from legacy fonts such as Preeti, Kantipur, Sagarmatha and Himalb into standard Unicode Devanagari that displays correctly on any device, can be searched, and can be pasted into websites, email and social media. Conversion happens live as you paste, entirely in your browser.
What Preeti is, and why it causes problems
Before Unicode support was common, Nepali was typed on computers using fonts such as Preeti, Kantipur, Sagarmatha and Himalb. These fonts work by drawing a Devanagari letter in place of an English keyboard character: the file stores the letter g, and the Preeti font displays it as न. On a computer that has the font, the text looks right. Everywhere else (on a phone, in a browser, in an email, after uploading to a website) the reader sees strings like g]kfn instead of नेपाल.
Unicode solves this by storing the real Devanagari characters, so the text displays correctly on every device and in every font that supports Nepali, can be searched by Google, read by screen readers, sorted in spreadsheets and pasted anywhere. Archives, newsrooms, government offices, translators and researchers around the world still hold large amounts of legacy-font text that needs converting.
How to convert a document
- Open the document in Word, LibreOffice or a PDF reader and select the Nepali text (Ctrl+A selects everything).
- Copy it and paste it into the box above. It will look like random English characters, which is expected.
- Check the font menu above matches the original font; Preeti is by far the most common.
- Copy the Unicode result and paste it back into your document.
- Change the font of the pasted text to a Unicode font such as Kalimati, Mangal or Noto Sans Devanagari. Do not set it back to Preeti, or it will turn into gibberish again.
Text copied out of PDFs often has broken line endings. Run the result through the Text Cleaner to rejoin lines and remove stray spaces.
Common Preeti keys
Useful for spotting which font a text uses, or fixing a single character by hand.
| Key | Letter | Key | Letter | Key | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s | क | g | न | f | ा (aa sign) |
| u | ग | k | प | l | ि (i sign, typed before the consonant) |
| r | च | a | ब | L | ी |
| h | ज | d | म | ' | ु |
| t | त | / | र | ] | े |
| b | द | n | ल | } | ै |
| x | ह | ; | स | + | ं |
| { | र् (reph) | | | ्र | \ | ् (halant) |
| ! | १ | ) | ० | . | । |
Things that need a manual check
- English words, numbers in English, email addresses and links inside a Preeti document are converted as if they were Nepali, because in Preeti every key is a Nepali letter. Retype them after converting.
- Wrong source font. Kantipur, Sagarmatha and Himalb place some letters on different keys. If a few characters come out wrong, try another font in the menu.
- Typing mistakes in the original. Legacy fonts let typists build letters from pieces, and some documents contain workarounds that look right in Preeti but have no exact Unicode equivalent. Proofread anything important.
- Formatting. Copy and paste carries plain text only, so tables, bold and headings need to be reapplied.
Writing new Nepali text? Skip legacy fonts entirely and type in Unicode directly with Roman to Nepali: type phonetically in English letters and get proper Unicode as you type.
Privacy
Documents that still use Preeti are often official letters, applications or records. This converter runs entirely in your browser, so the text is never uploaded to a server.