Dzongkha for Windows 7/8

Installing Dzongkha Unicode tools in Windows 7

The PDF version of the manual is downloadable from the end of this instruction page.

Basic support for Dzongkha script rendering is included in Windows 7, 8 and Vista. However, since there is no Dzongkha Locale, Keyboard, or fonts included in these operating systems, they need to be installed.

1. Dzongkha fonts

There are currently three Dzongkha Unicode fonts available which work well with most applications that support Unicode. These are:

DDC Uchen –— a tsuyig font developed by the DDC;
DDC Wangdi –— a joyig font developed by the DDC; and
Jomolhari — a tsuyig font, created independently by Chris Fynn based on Bhutanese examples, that was designed for printing pecha.

All these Dzongkha fonts are are freely available from the DDC under the terms of the Open Font License. and may be used by anyone at no cost. Our hope is that these fonts will facilitate Dzongkha written communication, stimulate Dzongkha literature production and elevate the Dzongkha script to greater parity with the Latin alphabet.

Installation Instructions

Method 1

Download the file DzongkhaFonts.zip and save to your Desktop.

Once the package has been downloaded, right click on the file and choose “Extract All…" or use a decompression utility such as 7-Zip to extract the files from "DzongkhaFonts.zip".

Next, open the folder where you extracted the files.

Select all the font files, right click on the file names and choose "Install". This will install the fonts on your computer.
Note: If you have an earlier version of any of these fonts installed, uninstall them before installing the newer version.

Note that this only gives you the fonts themselves. You will still need a Unicode-based application and a keyboard mechanism to enter Dzongkha characters (see below).

Method 2

Download the Dzongkha Fonts installer (DzongkhaFonts.msi] and save it on your desktop.
Double click "DzongkhaFonts.msi" and follow the instructions to automatically install the Dzongkha fonts on your system.

2. Installation of Dzongkha Locale

Download the Dzongkha locale installer [DZ-BT-Locale.msi] and save it on your desktop.
Double click on the file "DZ-BT-Locale" to run the program. It will automatically install a Dzongkha locale on your system.

3. Installation of Dzongkha Keyboard

Download the file DzongkhaKeyboard-Win.zip and save it to your desktop.
Once the package has been downloaded, right click on the file and choose “Extract All…" or use a decompression utility such as 7-Zip to extract the files from "DzongkhaKeyboard-Win.zip".

Next, navigate to the folder where you extracted the files.
Double click on the "setup.exe" file. This will automatically install Dzongkha keyboard on your system and, if you have previously installed the Dzongkha locale, it should show the language bar in the taskbar located at the bottom of your screen under OL. (Note: It is important to install the keyboard using this Setup utility. In Windows 7 do not try to manually install the Dzongkha keyboard.)

A diagram of the Dzongkha Keyboard layout is available here:
A Dzongkha keyboard which will automatically be assigned to the BO locale (BO) on your system is also available:
This is useful for typing text in applications which do not properly recognize the custom Dzongkha locale.

སྲོལ་འཛིན་དང་རྫོང་ཁ་གོང་འཕེལ་ལས་ཁུངས།

Department of Culture and Dzongkha Development