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I want to find a way by which I can write: This is my country and இது என் நாடு in consecutive lines. So far, the solutions require me to write the Tamil in a separate page, save it as an image and paste it after the English text which makes the output rather undesirable. Using xelatex also doesn't seem to work on my system.

Is there a way to use pdflatex and generate this document?

Things I have tried:

  1. I tried to only write in Tamil using the information provided here in xelatex (LaTeX/XeTeX setup Tamil/Indic languages). I keep getting the error that the font Latha was not found.

  2. I simply tried pasting the text as suggested here (Writing in தமிழ் (Tamil)), but as mentioned before, the output is very ugly.

Even a basic simple code using standalone documentclass would be sufficient for me. I am using MXLinux as the operating system.

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  • just replace Latha by any suitable font you have on your system eg whatever font your browser is using to display your question Sep 27, 2022 at 23:39
  • don't use pdflatex, use xelatex or lualatex. Sep 27, 2022 at 23:41
  • what do you mean by "using xelatex doesn't work on your system"? What tex system are you using and which error do you get? Sep 28, 2022 at 7:27

2 Answers 2

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In 2022, you can do this in LuaLaTeX with Babel: You will need to either use language tagging (especially if you want to change layout) or enable auto-detection as below, and to use the HarfBuzz renderer.

\documentclass{article}
\tracinglostchars=3
\usepackage[bidi=basic, english]{babel}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\babelprovide[import, onchar=ids fonts]{tamil}

\defaultfontfeatures{ Scale=MatchLowercase, Ligatures=TeX, Renderer=HarfBuzz }
\babelfont{rm}{Latin Modern Roman}
\babelfont[tamil]{rm}{Latha}

\begin{document}
\noindent
This is my country\\
இது என் நாடு
\end{document}

Latha font sample

Change this to your fonts of choice. Catamaran is free, open-source and available in a number of weights, and the Noto fonts are gratis, but any font that works in your word processor should work here too.

You could add a short phrase in Tamil to a document created in PDFTeX using the technique I demonstrate here (but changing the language).

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As suggested by David, xelatex is the choice for inputting indic text. The following can be compiled with xelatex:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontface\tamfont{Noto Sans Tamil}
  
\begin{document}

  This is my country and 
  {\tamfont இது என் நாடு}.

\end{document}

enter image description here

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  • This answer worked. Thanks! Other than Noto Sans Tamil, which other fonts are available? I tried searching online and I get many result sites from where I can download new Tamil fonts. Is there a way to find the fonts already present in my computer? Sep 28, 2022 at 7:59

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