Home > Hindi > Devanagari with Unipad

Typing Devanagari with Unipad Editor:

Disclaimer: "SC Unipad - The Unicode Text Editor" is created by Sharmahd Computing. This site is not affiliated with Sharmahd Computing or unipad.org, but is meant to assist those who use this text editor for editing Devanagari text.

UniPad is a Unicode™ plain text editor for the Windows NT®, Windows 2000®, Windows 9x®, Windows ME® and Windows XP® operating systems. It has built in multiple keyboards for various languages, allows editing of existing keyboards and creation of custom keyboards.

Unipad already has a standard Devanagari keyboard built in. Here, I wish to share my Devanagari Keyboard with anyone interested. This keyboard is phonetic and includes all Unicode glyphs for Devanagari (see screen shots below).

Steps for downloading and using Unipad with Devanagari Phonetic keyboard

  • Download upsetup.exe (executable setup file) or upsetup.zip (unzip and use) from http://www.unipad.org/download/.
  • Download DevPhon.zip (1.1 KB) from here: http://kalusa.org/hindi/Devanagari_Phonetic.zip. Unzip to extract Devanagari_Phonetic.ukb. Or, download Devanagari_Phonetic.ukb from here: http://www.unipad.org/keyboard/
  • Copy Devanagari_Phonetic.ukb to the same folder as up.exe (where Unipad is installed).
  • Run up.exe. The editor will open.
  • From top menu, click Keyboard, Load, point to Devanagari_Phonetic.ukb and click Open.
  • Keyboard display can be turned on or off by clicking the button on right of keyboard selection pull-down menu.

    Screen-shots of Devanagari_Phonetic.ukb

    Normal keys:


    Shift key pressed:


    Ctrl+Alt keys pressed:


    Ctrl+Alt+Shift/Capslock keys pressed:


    Normal keyboard (US English) for reference


    Known restriction

    For other details, manuals, restrictions, future developments, etc., visit http://www.unipad.org. One restriction is worth mentioning here, however:
    Due to present level of support for Indic scripts, the characters and accents (matras) do not join properly. For example, if you write मेरा, it will appear almost like म े र ा, only with lesser gap between characters. When you select the text and copy-paste it to a word-processor/email, it will appear properly.