LaTeX Unicode : How to write in Devanagari ?

[Biswas]

I was trying to write nepali text in LaTeX.

Packages I included in the '.tex' file ---
\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x,utf8]{inputenc}

Error found when I ran --- pdflatex '*.tex'
Package inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8:म not set up for use with
LaTeX

I would be really happy if you could share your experiences.

[Jwalanta Shrestha]

hi biswas,

latex doesnt support nepali unicode characters. for pure utf-16 documents, u can use omega [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_%28TeX%29 ] or XeTeX [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XeTeX ].

actually, if you just need to insert few characters u can use {devanagari} package:
\usepackage{devanagari}
but inserting devanagari characters this way is not easy as simply switching the keyboard layout and typing. there are specific codes for each characters. plus documentation is very scarce.

hope it helps..

~jwalanta

[Biswas Parajuli]

@jwalanta Yes dai..I also found \usepackage{devanagari} really tedious.
This link  --- http://tex.loria.fr/fontes/devanagari.ps.gz ----  contains the character set to be typed in to get the corresponding devanagari character. But I felt its lack of flexibility.
I am still confused about how " े " will be displayed with {\dn e} .Similar confusion with " ा " .

Anyway, just as a reference I would like to note down the steps I carried out to get my task running.

1. Went to Synaptic Package Manager (OS is Lenny)
2. installed texlive-latex-base , texlive-lang-indic , texlive-fonts-recommended
3. In the text editor
           a. included \usepackage{devanagari}

[Biswas Parajuli]

@jwalanta Yes dai..I also found \usepackage{devanagari} really tedious.
This link  --- http://tex.loria.fr/fontes/devanagari.ps.gz ----  contains the character set to be typed in to get the corresponding devanagari character. But I felt its lack of flexibility.
I am still confused about how " े " will be displayed with {\dn e} .Similar confusion with " ा " .

Anyway, just as a reference I would like to note down the steps I carried out to get my task running.

source : http://dustyant.com/articles/using-devanagari-in-latex/

1. Went to Synaptic Package Manager (OS is Lenny)
2. installed texlive-latex-base , texlive-lang-indic , texlive-fonts-recommended
3. In the text editor
           a. included \usepackage{devanagari}

           b. {\dn x} syntax used for including character set  'x'
           c.  saved the file with "*.dn" extension say "sample.dn"
4.In terminal ran
           a.   devnag sample.dn
                      which gave the corresponding tex file "sample.tex"  
           b.   pdflatex sample.tex
                       which gave the pdf file "sample.pdf"