Adding Unicode Support to the Bhaktivedanta VedaBase

Unicode Support for the Bhaktivedanta VedaBase®: Copy and Paste Your Text in Unicode.

 

This new, free update lets you copy and paste text in Unicode, the modern standard for fonts with diacritic marks. When you use Unicode, Kåñëa, for example, will be gone, and the people you write to should see Kṛṣṇa.

Using Unicode enables you to adopt a standard increasingly accepted throughout the world. You can paste Unicode text into documents and emails. You can use it on websites and Facebook. You can use it just about anywhere.

The update comes in the form of a small file (a “plugin”) you can easily download and install. Simple instructions come with it. You can download the file here.

The plugin gives you three ways to copy text:

  • Copy with Unicode
  • Copy as plain text (no diacritics)
  • Copy with diacritics the old way (no longer recommended)

For each of these three ways, you also have the option to include a reference.

The plugin was coded by Indupati Dasa, a disciple of Srila B. V. Narayana Maharaja.

Unicode is a modern typographic standard for processing text in multiple languages. The standard accommodates all the diacritic marks needed for rendering Sanskrit and Bengali in Roman transliteration.

Before Unicode, type fonts offered a relatively small number of characters, and to add a new character – for example, an ā – you would have to sacrifice an existing character and put the new one in its place. There was no one standard for these substitutions.

In the BBT (and ISKCON), two in-house, mutually incompatible standards came into use. Each standard works only with fonts modified for it. When text keyed in by one of these standards is displayed in a font not made for it, you are likely to see a word like Kṛṣṇa rendered in a form such as Kåñëa.

Commonly used modern fonts like Cambria, Calibri, and Georgia include all the characters we use to write Sanskrit and Bengali text in ordinary roman characters. Some less-used Unicode fonts, however, may not include all the characters you need. So if you’re doing serious publishing, carefully check your font.

Although the Folio VedaBase still internally needs to use old-technology fonts like “ScaTimes” or “ScaGoudy,” the new plugin lets you copy your text as modern Unicode.

Please note: This plugin is unsupported and provided “as is.” This site is not affiliated with the Bhaktivedanta Archives, publisher of the Bhaktivedanta VedaBase®.