GUIDE
Hindi typing: InScript, Mangal and Kruti Dev
They are not three alternatives. InScript is a keyboard layout, Mangal is a font, and Kruti Dev is a legacy encoding typed on a different layout. InScript produces real Unicode Devanagari that any system can read; Kruti Dev produces Latin characters that only look like Devanagari when its own font is applied. Learn InScript.
Three names, three different kinds of thing
Almost every argument about Hindi typing is confused by the fact that the three names people compare are not comparable. One is a layout, one is a font, and one is an encoding. Sorting that out answers most of the question by itself.
It matters more than the usual terminology quibble, because the choice decides whether the text you produce is Devanagari or merely looks like it.
- InScript — a keyboard layout
- Which key produces which character. The Indian government standard, and what these lessons teach. It arranges Devanagari across the keys in the order the script is traditionally recited, vowels under the left hand and consonants under the right.
- Mangal — a font
- A typeface that draws Unicode Devanagari. It has no layout of its own and no opinion about how you type. Shipped with Windows, which is why its name ended up in so many requirements documents.
- Kruti Dev — a legacy encoding
- A font-and-layout pair from before Unicode was widely supported, typed on a Remington-derived arrangement. DevLys is the same idea under another name.
What Kruti Dev actually produces
This is the part that surprises people, and it is the whole reason the two traditions cannot be mixed.
Kruti Dev does not produce Devanagari. It produces ordinary Latin characters, chosen so that when the Kruti Dev font is applied to them, the shapes on screen look like Devanagari. The underlying text is not Hindi in any sense a computer understands. It is a sequence of Latin letters wearing a costume.
The consequences are immediate once the text leaves the machine it was typed on. Paste it somewhere without that exact font and it renders as nonsense. Search it and nothing matches. Run a spellchecker and every word is wrong. Read it with a screen reader and it is announced as gibberish. Sort a column of names and the order is meaningless.
Unicode Devanagari, which is what InScript produces, has none of those problems, because the text really is Devanagari. That is not a preference between two conventions. One of them is text and the other is a picture of text.
Why a requirement naming Mangal is a requirement for InScript
Mangal is a Unicode Devanagari font. It can only display text that is already Unicode Devanagari — it cannot rescue Kruti Dev bytes, because those are Latin characters and Mangal would draw them as Latin characters.
So a document asking for Mangal is asking for Unicode Devanagari, whatever else it says. InScript is the standard way to type that on an Indian keyboard, which is why the two names travel together even though one is a font and the other is a layout.
If you are preparing for something that names Mangal, you are preparing to produce Unicode Devanagari, and InScript is the layout that does it.
What InScript gets you beyond compatibility
The arrangement is not arbitrary, and knowing the logic makes it much faster to learn than memorising a chart.
Devanagari is traditionally recited in a fixed order — the vowels first, then the consonants in groups by where in the mouth they are formed. InScript follows that order across the keyboard. Vowel signs sit under the left hand and consonants under the right, so an ordinary syllable alternates hands, which is the same property that makes English touch typing comfortable on QWERTY.
It also transfers. The same arrangement serves Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit without modification, because they share the script — and the wider InScript family puts the phonetically equivalent letter in the same position across the scripts that belong to it, so a Hindi typist meeting a Telugu, Kannada or Bengali keyboard finds it already half-familiar. Not every Indian script joined: Tamil 99 was designed for Tamil rather than adapted from the pan-Indic standard, and Sinhala uses Wijesekara.
The keyboard guide on the Hindi lessons here shows both layers at once: the physical key and the Devanagari character it produces. That is the part a printed keycap cannot do for a script you are still learning.
The honest case for Kruti Dev, and when it runs out
There is one, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. If the office you are joining runs on Kruti Dev documents, if the operator you are replacing typed in Kruti Dev, or if a specific employer's test is set in it, then that is the skill being asked for and no amount of being technically right changes that.
What is worth knowing is that the skill does not transfer and the files do not travel. Kruti Dev is a Remington-derived arrangement, so the positions are not InScript's and learning one does not teach the other. And the documents produced cannot be searched, sorted, spellchecked or safely moved between systems.
This site teaches InScript only, and that is a deliberate limitation rather than an oversight. If Kruti Dev is what you need, you need a resource built for it.
About the exam requirements themselves
Government and clerical typing examinations in India specify speeds, durations and sometimes a named font, and those specifications change and differ between bodies. This site does not list them, for the same reason it refuses to repeat the commonly quoted claim that the average person types 40 words per minute: a number whose provenance does not survive checking is worse than no number, and an outdated requirement copied from another website is exactly that.
Read the current notification for the examination you are sitting. What this page can tell you is the part that does not change: if it names Mangal, or Unicode, or Devanagari, it means the tradition InScript belongs to.
Questions
Is Mangal a keyboard layout?
No. Mangal is a font — a typeface that draws Unicode Devanagari. It has no layout and no view on how you type. The layout that produces the text Mangal displays is InScript, which is why the two names are so often confused.
Why does my Kruti Dev text turn into nonsense on another computer?
Because it was never Devanagari. Kruti Dev stores ordinary Latin characters that only look like Devanagari when its own font is applied. Without that font the machine shows what is actually there. Unicode Devanagari, which InScript produces, does not have this problem anywhere.
Is InScript harder to learn than a phonetic Hindi layout?
It is harder for about a week and easier afterwards. A phonetic layout borrows the positions you already know, which helps at the start and stops helping once your fingers stop hunting. InScript is arranged around Devanagari's own recitation order, so the structure is doing work for you rather than against you.
Does learning InScript for Hindi help with other Indian languages?
Yes, more than you would expect. Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit use the same arrangement unchanged because they share the script. Across the wider InScript family the phonetically equivalent letter sits in the same position, so a Hindi typist meeting Telugu or Gujarati already knows where things are. Tamil and Sinhala are the exceptions — each uses a standard of its own.
Which do employers actually want?
It depends on the employer and it changes, so check the notification rather than a website. The durable part is that anything asking for Mangal, Unicode or Devanagari means the InScript tradition, and anything asking specifically for Kruti Dev means the other one.
Put it into practice
The languages this guide is about: Hindi, Marathi and Nepali — each with its own lessons, speed test and games.
Reading about typing is the smaller half. The beginner course starts on the home row, the speed test will tell you where you stand, and all of it works in 86 languages without an account.