User Guide – Bangla Unicode Setup Guide

Please follow the steps outlined in this guide to properly setup your computer for Bangla/Bengali Unicode support. It will show you how to:

• Add support for Unicode Bangla in Windows
• Install Bangla Unicode fonts
• Setup your internet browser for proper Unicode support

Steps are very easy to follow and at the end of the process you will be able to read/write Bangla in any application that supports Unicode input.

How to view Bengali (Bangla) Unicode Fonts

The preferred option to view Bengali should be Unicode 4.1 compliant Bengali OpenType Fonts (OTF). This is applicable for GNU Linux, Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000. Unfortunately Windows 9x and Win ME are not well supported. Microsoft has already announced end of support for Windows 9x and Windows ME. I am not familiar with Mac.
There are three good choices.

• Free Bengali Fonts from OmicronLab
• Ekushey Unicode Based Free OpenType Bangla Fonts
• The Free Bangla Fonts Project

If you want to install Bengali Fonts visit the following links

• GNU Linux
• Microsoft Windows

For Microsoft Windows, a simple approach is to use the automatic font installer with all open type free bangla fonts from OmicronLab. Note that the following fonts, which are not compliant with Unicode 4.1, are also installed.

• Akaash
• Mitra Mono
• Sagar
• Mukti narrow

If you, still, cannot see Unicode Bangla (Bengali) based web sites, with IE, Firefox or Opera, then ensure that your browser’s encoding is Unicode (UTF-8).

Futher reading: Bangla Font Help