Let me rephrase your problem, so I'm sure I understand you correctly.

You experience a display problem, no an encoding problem; you have a certain font which displays local charcters well (say, in Hindu, Tamil, ...), but which do not support the "full" unicode set ("full unicode support" is always relative). Is this correct?

Or do you want to generally use a non-unicode encoding for your online page, which fits to the needs of a local language?

Hi Stefan, you are right. But its not a display problem. I want the exact encoding for the unicode content. Say, I may type in a text box the unicode(Malayalam using google IME). And when I save, i want one unicode data as it is entered and another to a True type Malayalam (ML Revathi or ML Karthika font) data. The conversion is done a tool called type it ( done in VB). You can check it in http://www.mottusuchi.in/ . There font conversions are possible via an OCX i think. I want the same facility to be in web (asp.net).

Help would be very much appreciable.

Mmmh, I still don't fully get it. There are 4 things mixed up (alphabet, keyboard entry method, encoding and font display). This could be because I'm used to a modified Latin alphabet (German). To add to the confusion, Type It also speaks of copying and pasting fonts (probably they are using HTML or RTF objects in the clipboard, which has both text and font information).

So you're entering a text somehow, resulting in a Unicode-encoded text. This text can then be displayed in a specific font. But you don't know how to display in this font. Doesn't Windows supply a font renderer which supports Unicode? The Revathi / Kartinka TT fonts should have codepage information embedded which allow this, no?

Yes, I am attaching the snap shots. Here I have a web, I typed in with IME malayalam unicode. Then with another tool called type it, I used a convert method from unicode to ML-TTKarthika (it is the default font in type it). Also attached the screen when pasted directly. Then saved as RTF and opened it in word, it shows the TT font.

Now my requirement is how this be done entirely in the web application itself. Let users to type it in with Unicode (easy to IME tools), and internally converting to TT fonted data. Hope you get my requirement now.

I see. Probably Type It is using the ASCII clipboard when directly pasting, instead of the Unicode one. Since there is no ASCII representation of these characters, they are stored as '?'.

You can try two things to check the encoding (to see if ML Karthinka uses Unicode):

1. Use "paste special" in Word to paste as Unicode, then format the result in ML Karthinka. If this works, you're fine with the unicode representation.

2. You can open the RTF file in a Unicode-aware generic editor (such as "notepad++") and look for the text. The Unicode editor will probably use "Arial Unicode" which also supports your special characters. Then you can search for your text; it will be buried under lots of formatting commands. If you can find your text, the Unicode encoding is fine.

Can you write some English text in Type It, some text in your language, save as RTF and send me the file?

OK, thanks. I am busy with another project. Let me try what you suggested and will send later. Hope now u understood my requirement. If we can directly convert the uniocde to its native true type font, it is very easy to do news postings.

The paste special has, pasting the copied text into unicode facility.

OK, so then everything is fine for you now?

No, still this is the work around. I want it to be done programaticcaly.

1. adding some texts in unicode

2. System stores it in unicode

3. When accessed, system converts this unicode text to true type malayalam font text

this is the requirement. What i showed before is how it can be done manually...

OK. What is your output format? Here is an example perl script which creates HTML output:

#!/usr/bin/perl

#

# This is a simple example of HTML text output in UTF8 and an arbitrary font

#

# Fonts from: https://sites.google.com/site/fontpacksite/malayalam-fonts

#

my $wikipedia_text = "Malayalam (pronounced /mæləˈjɑːləm/; മലയാളം, malayāḷam ?, IPA: [mɐləjaːɭəm]), is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Kerala.";

my $wikipedia_text2= "മലയാളം, ഇന്ത്യയിൽ‌ കേരള സംസ്ഥാനത്തിലും ലക്ഷദ്വീപിലും പുതുച്ചേരിയുടെ ഭാഗമായ മാഹിയിലും സംസാരിക്കപ്പെടുന്ന ഭാഷയാണ്. ഇതു ദ്രാവിഡ ഭാഷാ കുടുംബത്തിൽപ്പെടുന്നു.";

print STDOUT

മലയാളം Example

Example in Arial Unicode MS:
$wikipedia_text
$wikipedia_text2

Example in Kartika:
$wikipedia_text
$wikipedia_text2

Example in Revathi:
$wikipedia_text
$wikipedia_text2

EOHTML

__END__

no, for this u assigned separate uniocde and malayalam (tt font) text. My requirement is with the same unicode text, we need to switch to unicode and tt font text. But still it shows some light on some new idea. Hope we will get a solution.. right..?