SHOBHIKA: A brand new open source Devanagari font from IIT Bombay
Manish Modi
ॐ ह्रीं श्रीपार्श्वनाथाय नमः
Auṃ Hrīṃ ŚrīPārśvanāthāya Namaḥ
Jay Jinendra
Shobhika
A Devanāgarī font for scholars
Shobhika is a free, open source, Unicode compliant, OpenType font with support for Devanāgarī, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts. It is available in two weights—regular and bold. The font is designed with over 1600 Devanāgarī glyphs, including support for over 1100 conjunct consonants, as well as vedic accents. The Latin component of the font not only supports a wide range of characters required for Roman transliteration of Sanskrit, but also provides a subset of regularly used mathematical symbols for scholars working with scientific and technical documents. The project has been launched under the auspices of the Science and Heritage Initiative (SandHI) at IIT Bombay, and builds upon the following two fonts for its Devanāgarī and Latin components respectively: (i) Yashomudra by Rājya Marāṭhī Vikās Saṃsthā, and (ii) PT Serif by ParaType. We would like to thank both these organisations for releasing their fonts under the SIL Open Font Licence, which has enabled us to create Shobhika.
Objectives
Shobhika has been developed with the following objectives. The font should:
- Provide extensive support for Devanāgarī conjuncts
- Support vedic accents
- Ensure cross-platform compatibility across operating systems and applications
- Be available in at least regular and bold weights
- Provide a good quality companion Latin font with support for Devanāgarī transliteration
Highlights of the font
The following are the main features of the Shobhika font:
Outstanding support for Devanāgarī conjuncts: Building upon the Yashomudra font, Shobhika ships with support for over 1100 Devanāgarī conjunct characters found in Sanskrit texts, and also includes support for some common conjuncts found in Marathi, Urdu, and English. The ि and ी mātrās have been designed in multiple widths to ensure that they sit properly on conjunct characters of various widths. Marks like the repha, bindu, and chandrabindu have been designed to render properly together with various mātrās.
Support for vedic accents: Shobhika supports the svarita, dīrgha-svarita, and the anudātta, as well as a number of other vedic accents and nasalisation marks required for the proper typesetting of ṛgveda and yajurveda.
Availability in two weights: Shobhika is available in regular and bold weights.
Good quality companion Latin font: Building upon the PT Serif font, Shobhika ships with additional glyphs required for English transliteration of Devanāgarī, and also inherits the base font's support for the Cyrillic script. Additional mathematical symbols have been added to cater to a wider range of scholarly requirements.
License
Shobhika is licensed under the SIL Open Font License v1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
To view the copyright and specific terms and conditions please refer to OFL.txt
Downloading the font
The latest release of the font can be found on the releases page.
Installing the font
Shobhika is compatible across different operating systems and has been tested on Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu Linux. To install on any of these, double click the downloaded file and follow instructions.
Getting Involved
Would you like to contribute to the development of this font? Here is how you can help:
Report bugs and issues that you encounter, or enhancements that you would like in the github issues page.