Is Kantipur the same as Preeti font?

No. Both are legacy Nepali fonts that encode Devanagari as ASCII, but they use different key mappings. A document typed in Kantipur and opened with the Preeti font will display as garbled characters, and vice versa. Conversion requires knowing which font was used.

Guides›Kantipur font to Unicode

Kantipur font

Kantipur font to Unicode: what you need to know

Q: Can I convert a Kantipur font document to Unicode?

Yes. tounicode.com is building a dedicated Kantipur converter. The Preeti converter is live now at preeti.tounicode.com. The Kantipur converter is coming soon — join the waitlist to be notified when it launches.

Kantipur is one of Nepal's most widely used legacy Devanagari fonts, used extensively by newspapers, publishing houses, and many government offices from the mid-1990s onward. Like Preeti, it encodes Nepali text as ASCII characters — meaning it looks correct only when the Kantipur font is installed. Moving to Unicode makes documents searchable, portable, and future-proof.

Is Kantipur the same as Preeti?

No — Preeti and Kantipur are separate fonts with different key mappings. Both use the same basic principle: ASCII characters are remapped to display Devanagari glyphs. But each font uses its own mapping table. A document typed in Kantipur, if opened with the Preeti font installed, will display as meaningless Latin characters — and vice versa.

Other common legacy fonts in Nepal — Himalaya, Fontasy Himali, Mangal, Kanchan — each have their own mapping. Correct conversion requires knowing which font was used to type the document.

How to identify which font your document uses

Open the document in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice. Select any Nepali paragraph and look at the font name in the toolbar. If it says Kantipur, you have a Kantipur document. If it says Preeti, use the Preeti converter right now.

Common font names for legacy Nepali documents include: Preeti, Kantipur, Fontasy Himali, Himalaya, Kanchan, Sagarmatha, PCS Nepali, Bishall. Each needs its own conversion mapping.

Converting Kantipur to Unicode

tounicode.com is building a dedicated Kantipur converter. The technology is the same as the Preeti converter — an in-place OOXML transform that rewrites the text encoding while preserving every image, table, and layout element in the original .docx.

The Kantipur converter is in development. If you have Kantipur documents to convert and would like early access, email support@tounicode.com or use the notify link below.

Have Preeti documents?

The Preeti converter is live now. Free account, 100 credits on signup.

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Need Kantipur conversion?

Join the waitlist to be notified when the Kantipur converter launches.

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Why does legacy font conversion matter?

Legacy Nepali fonts like Kantipur, Preeti, and Fontasy Himali are not real Unicode. Search engines, e-filing systems, modern databases, and mobile phones all treat the text as opaque strings of ASCII. A search for "नेपाल" finds nothing in a Kantipur document because the file actually contains the ASCII string "g]kfn" (or its Kantipur equivalent). Once converted to Unicode, the document becomes searchable, indexable, and genuinely accessible to Nepali readers on any device.

Frequently asked

Is Kantipur the same as Preeti?

No. Both are legacy fonts encoding Devanagari as ASCII, but they use different key mappings. A Kantipur document opened with Preeti font displays as garbled characters.

Can I convert a Kantipur font document to Unicode?

The Kantipur converter is coming soon. The Preeti converter is live now — if your document uses Preeti, you can convert it immediately.

How do I know which font my document uses?

Open the .docx in Word or LibreOffice, select any Nepali text, and check the font name in the toolbar. Common Nepali fonts: Preeti, Kantipur, Fontasy Himali, Kanchan.