Instructions on how to enable your browsers to be able to read Devanagri (Hindi).
Since many Kudoz questions and/or answers are posted in Devanagari (Hindi) these days on ProZ. And since many people do not see a correct display of the text in their browsers, I thought it worthwhile to post this information earlier in one of the Forums, and now here, thanks to the idea by a colleague sharing similar information about Japanese.
"Win*
If you are on Win*, the best way to do a browser test is to have a look at the BBC Hindi page. But you obviously came here because you were not able to see these pages in the first place.
First, what do you see right now when you go to the BBC Hindi page?
boxes, or
junk characters?
If you see junk characters, set the View->Encoding to UTF-8. You'll start seeing the hindi characters, or boxes. If you see boxes, it means the browser is not able to find a a utf-8 encoded font to show the characters, so it just replaces the missing "glyphs" or shapes, with boxes.
It may not be able to find the font because:
The font is not installed on the machine, in which case, you can get it from here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/- the raghu.ttf file and copy it to your Winodws Fonts folder or WinNT Fonts folder as the case may be. You should now have a raghindi font in this folder.
The script-encoding-font mapping is not set in the browser.
For IE
go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Fonts. Choose devanagari from the list and click on any one of the fonts that appear in the box(es) below. If no fonts appear in the list(happens sometimes) come out anyway, refresh the Hindi page . You should be able to see it now. If not, close the browser windows and reopen them, if even that doesn't work, reboot and try again. But most cases you won't have to go that far.
for Mozilla
go to Edit->Preferences->Appearance->Fonts and set the font to raghu/raghindi.
If you are on win2k or xp, you might find these tips useful.
Additional instructions for installing the Indic language pack.
Optional For Windows 2000
Go to Control Panel->Regional Settings->Langauges->Check Indic from the list of languages
Click Apply/Ok. You will be asked to enter the Windows 2000 cd. System will have to be rebooted, after which you can choose the keboard layouts.
Optional For Windows XP
Go to Control Panel->Regional Settings->Langauges->Install support for complex scripts including Thai. Click Apply/Ok. You will be asked to enter the Windows XP cd. System will have to be rebooted, after which you can choose the keboard layouts."
If you are still facing problems, you can ask for a solution to your problem from BBC Hindi site - http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/
Click on "Problem Viewing", on top right corner.
Canada