Krutidev → Roman Character Map

Krutidev (often written as “Kruti Dev”) is a legacy, non-Unicode, ANSI font family used widely across North India for typing Devanagari and other Devanagari languages—especially in government offices, DTP shops, and older exam forms. Because Krutidev stores glyphs in Latin code points (A–Z, a–z, punctuation), text typed in Krutidev looks like gibberish unless the same font is applied. A Krutidev → Roman Character Map bridges that gap by translating Krutidev-encoded strings first into proper Unicode Devanagari and then into a readable Roman (Latin) transliteration.

Why you might need this

• Digitization & search: Convert old Krutidev documents to Unicode so they can be searched, indexed, and shared online.
• Interoperability: Use the text across devices (phones, Macs, Linux) that don’t have Krutidev installed.
• Analytics & NLP: Romanized output is easier to process for text-mining pipelines that aren’t Devanagari-aware.

How the conversion works (high-level)

1. Detect Krutidev variant: Krutidev 010/016/055 etc. have near-identical layouts but a few symbols differ.
2. Map glyphs → Devanagari: Replace the ANSI glyph positions with the intended Devanagari characters (क, ख, ग …), fix reph (ऱ/र्), and reorder matras (ि, ी, ु, ू) to their logical positions.
3. Normalize to Unicode: Compose characters (e.g., consonant + virama + consonant) and handle nukta letters (क़, ख़, ग़, ज़, ड़, ढ़, फ़, य़).
4. Transliterate Unicode → Roman: Apply a consistent romanization (e.g., ISO-like or a simpler “type-as-you-speak” scheme: ka, kha, ga…; ā/aa, ī/ee, ū/oo, ṛ/Ri, etc.).

Key features of a good Krutidev → Roman map

• Accurate conjunct handling: क्ष, त्र, ज्ञ and halant-based clusters (क्त, द्य, स्त…).
• Matra re-ordering: Especially pre-base ि and reph र्.
• Nukta support: क़, ख़, ग़, ज़, ड़, ढ़, फ़, य़.
• Punctuation & numbers: Devanagari digits (०-९), danda (। ॥), rupee (₹) and common ASCII punctuation.
• Configurable romanization: Choose between scholarly (ā ī ū ṛ ṅ ñ ṭ ḍ ṇ ś ṣ) or simple (aa ee oo Ri NG NY T D N sh Sh) output.

Example flow

Input (Krutidev-encoded): fgUnh
Unicode (Devanagari): हिन्दी
Roman (simple): hindee or hindī (scholarly)

Common pitfalls & tips

• Variant mismatches: If output looks off, verify the exact Krutidev number used in the source file.
• Broken conjuncts: Extra spaces or line breaks in the Krutidev text can split clusters—clean the text first.
• Lossy copies: Copy-pasting from PDFs may drop combining marks; prefer extracting text from the original DOC/DTP file if possible.
• Consistency: Pick one romanization style and stick to it across your site or dataset.

Mini sample mapping (Krutidev → Unicode → Roman)

Below is a tiny, human-readable excerpt (Roman shown in a simple scheme):

"क": "ka", "ख": "kha", "ग": "ga", "घ": "gha", "ङ": "NGa",
"च": "cha", "छ": "chha", "ज": "ja", "झ": "jha", "ञ": "NYa",
"ट": "Ta", "ठ": "Tha", "ड": "Da", "ढ": "Dha", "ण": "Na",
"त": "ta", "थ": "tha", "द": "da", "ध": "dha", "न": "na",
"प": "pa", "फ": "pha/f", "ब": "ba", "भ": "bha", "म": "ma",
"य": "ya", "र": "ra", "ल": "la", "व": "va/wa", "श": "sha",
"ष": "Sha", "स": "sa", "ह": "ha", "क्ष": "ksha", "त्र": "tra",
"ज्ञ": "gya/jna", "अ": "a", "आ": "aa/ā", "इ": "i", "ई": "ee/ī",
"उ": "u", "ऊ": "oo/ū", "ऋ": "Ri/ṛ", "ए": "e", "ऐ": "ai",
"ओ": "o", "औ": "au", "।": "|", "॥": "||", "₹": "Rs"
  

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