6. PDF from Unicode

6.1. Lekho

Lekho is a simple text editor with the capability to create Unicode encoded Bangla+English text files. It uses the "Adarshalipi" family of TrueType fonts for showing Bangla glyphs. If you have never used it then have a look at it's website . The website along with the Lekho distribution contain enough docs to get someone start using Lekho.

The "Adarshalipi" fonts are quite similar to the Bijoy fonts and so the Type1 conversion procedure is same as the Bijoy fonts. Using a Type1 Adarshalipi font, Lekho can produce PDFs from Unicode encoded Bangla text files. Actually Lekho produces Postscript files which in turn is converted to PDF using tools like ps2pdf . The next steps describe PDF creation using Lekho, provided that a Type1 "Adarshalipi" font has been installed already:

Lekho has another valuable feature - it can export a file to bangtex , the Latex macro package for Bangla. So, the Latex users can eventually use this feature to create PDFs.

6.2. BSpeller

BSpeller is basically a Bangla spell checker. Besides, it is a light weight text editor with the ability to print. Instead of TrueType or Type1, BSpeller relies on OpenType fonts. So it requires GTK+ 2.0 (or later) to render Bangla glyphs. As it is still a beta software, it's output is somewhat shaky.