Dave TrueType Font.

Why Devanagri (ਦੇਵਨਾਗਰੀ) characters in the Gurmukhi range? . . .

There are many people who speak Punjabi,This is the Dave Truetype Font in a web browser. As always, browser rendering enginesvary but this is perfectly legible. cannot read Gurmukhi but can read Devanagari (the Hindu population for instance - also many signs and so on are written in Devanagari so people will tend to be able, at least, to read Devanagari).

The Dave font takes the Gurmukhi range but outputs Devanagari characters instead. This means that a piece of text written in Gurmukhi (using Unicode) can easily be displayed as Devanagari, simply by changing the font.

The Dave font has five different styles: Book; Bold; Heavy; Script Left; and, Script Right.

There is more to it than that because there are different ways of doing it...

You will see below that combined characters that appear as: bindi/tippee followed by a letter; and, adhak preceded letters use a 'half-form' in Devanagari. These are written horizontally or vertically and in some cases, they can be written as either - where this is the case, there is a 'H' or 'V' font option.

Additionally, 'eeya' and 'eeyaa' has the aerda changed into the Devanagari equivalent of yaeya. Where this happens, there is an option to keep the bihari ('B') or not use it ('A') ... so, if represented using Gurmukhi ਬਿੱਲੀਆਂ becomes ਬਿੱਲੀਯਾਂ ('B') or ਬਿੱਲਯਾਂ ('A').

As a result, there are four options for each font style: 'HA'; 'HB'; 'VA'; and, 'VB'.

So, to summarise...

Dave comes in five styles, each with four options

These are the five styles...
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
... and these are the four options in each style...
Dave, UTF-8 TrueType font
... thus making a total of 20 fonts. So as to stop this from cluttering up your system, you can download fonts individually or in groups according to style or option

One additonal point, worthy of note is that like Gurvetica, Dave uses Roman characters in the Roman range of the font and, like Gurvetica, those characters keep a consistent style with the rest of the font's characters.

For those curious about Devanagri . . .

If you don't know Devanagari, here is a very brief primer...

Dave, UTF-8 TrueType fontOn the right, you can see the Gurmukhi alphabet, along with the six paer-bindi characters and four other characters.

On the far right, you can see the equivalent Devanagari characters.

ੜ੍ਹ crops up enough in Punjabi to make it worth including here (there is no other way you would be able to figure it out).

Dave, UTF-8 TrueType fontHere are the equivalent vowel pairs in Punjabi and Devanagari.

Dave, UTF-8 TrueType fontThis is what happens with the first four characters of the 'k' line when you apply an adhak.

Note that when the character is not aspirated, you just double it up with its half-form.

However, when it is aspirated, you use the half form of the unaspirated version of the letter (so, adhak-kh becomes k-kh because you can't aspirate a sound that has stopped).

In effect, the first half form is the fist half of that letter - in Punjabi, the Adhak produces effectively two letters together so you only see one half form - the first. If you are not interested in producing text that can change back to Gurmukhi, you can produce multiple half-forms in the same way that you would produce a paer character, ie, by using the halant (normally the [d] key) - look at the word 'script' in the individual font listings at the bottom of the page.

Dave, UTF-8 TrueType fontHere, you can see what happens to a bindi/tippee for each of the five rows. The font uses the following character to work out the correct nasalisation half form to use.

If you remember that the last letter of each row is the nasalisation of that row's mouth shape, then using a ਞ to nasalise a ਚ makes sense.

In English, we use 'n' and 'm' to nasalise and, when you think about it, 'm' usually precedes a 'p' as in 'pump' and 'n' precedes 't' as in 'hint'.

Now, think about where you put your tongue when you form the 'n' in 'ink' and 'inch'.

In Devanagari, this is all written down for you and the Dave font does this for you by looking at the letters that follow the nasalisation and producing the appropriate nasalisation half form for that letter.

Examples of page used with Dave . . .
click on the image to open it up full-sized in another tab...

Dave font gurmukhi free download

Hover the mouse over the images below to show examples of font characters and weights

Download Dave . . .

    Download Dave Sans Book TrueType font
Dave sans book font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
    or, individually ...
dave_kha.ttf123,184 bytes 
dave_khb.ttf123,284 bytes 
dave_kva.ttf123,484 bytes 
dave_kvb.ttf123,584 bytes 
 
    Download Dave Sans Bold TrueType font
Dave sans bold font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
    or, individually ...
dave_dha.ttf132,332 bytes 
dave_dhb.ttf132,460 bytes 
dave_dva.ttf131,780 bytes 
dave_dvb.ttf131,908 bytes 
 
    Download Dave Sans Heavy TrueType font
Dave sans Heavy font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
    or, individually ...
dave_yha.ttf127,840 bytes 
dave_yhb.ttf127,940 bytes 
dave_yva.ttf127,356 bytes 
dave_yvb.ttf127,456 bytes 
 
    Download Dave Script Left TrueType font
Dave script left font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
    or, individually ...
dave_lha.ttf157,268 bytes 
dave_lhb.ttf157,440 bytes 
dave_lva.ttf157,192 bytes 
dave_lvb.ttf157,364 bytes 
 
    Download Dave Script Right TrueType font
Dave script right font Gurmukhi/Devanagari free download
    or, individually ...
dave_rha.ttf157,644 bytes 
dave_rhb.ttf157,800 bytes 
dave_rva.ttf157,524 bytes 
dave_rvb.ttf157,680 bytes 

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