Write on a PDF
Add a name, a date, a reference number or a note to a document — in Nepali or English. The Nepali is shaped, not just mapped: conjuncts form and matras move to where they belong, which is the part every free PDF tool gets wrong.
What to write
No file chosenUp to 40 MB, and it stays on your device
The document
| File | — |
|---|---|
| Pages | — |
| Writing on | — |
The text
| Script | — |
|---|---|
| Characters typed | — |
| Glyphs drawn | — |
Fewer glyphs than characters is the shaping working: conjuncts have merged into single forms.
The text is real text, not a picture of text. It is selectable and searchable in the finished PDF, because the font is embedded rather than the words being drawn as an image. Only the glyphs actually used are embedded, so the file grows by tens of kilobytes rather than by the size of the whole typeface.
Noto Sans Devanagari, under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 — the licence is served alongside it at /fonts/NotoSansDevanagari-OFL.txt, which is a condition of using it and not a courtesy.
Why Nepali comes out wrong everywhere else
A PDF font is a map from bytes to glyphs. That works for English, where a letter is a glyph and they are drawn in the order you typed them. Devanagari does not work that way, in two respects, and both of them break a naive tool.
Matras move. You type कि as क then the i-matra — but it isdrawn with the matra first, to the left of the consonant. A tool that draws in typed order puts the vowel on the wrong side.
Conjuncts merge. क्षेत्र is seven codepoints. It is three glyphs. The consonant clusters combine into single forms that exist in the font as their own shapes, and a tool that looks up each codepoint separately draws seven pieces of a word that should have been three.
The result is not slightly ugly — it is misspelt, and any Nepali reader sees it at a glance. It is why "add text to PDF" tools are usable in English and useless here.
What this page does instead
It runs the font's own OpenType layout tables — the same machinery a browser uses — before writing anything, so the glyphs that reach the page are the shaped ones in the drawn order. The readout above prints the character count and the glyph count side by side, so you can watch it happen: type क्षेत्र and seven becomes three.
Placing it without a preview
A PDF measures from the bottom-left corner, which nobody thinks in, and every document is a different size. So position is an anchor — one of nine points on the page — plus an offset in millimetres from it. A bottom-right anchor with a 15 mm offset lands where a signature goes, on A4 and on Legal and on a scan of neither.
Right- and bottom-anchored text is measured first and then placed, so it ends at the margin rather than starting there. That is the difference between a name sitting on the line and running off the edge.
What it is not
It is not a form filler — it writes onto the page rather than into named form fields — and it is not a signature. A drawn or typed name is a mark, not a cryptographic signature, and it proves nothing about who added it. If a document needs to be legally signed, that is a certificate and a different tool.
Related
Preeti to Unicode if your Nepali text is trapped in a legacy font — convert it there first, then write it here. Merge and Split handle the pages themselves.
Common questions
- Is this Write Nepali text on a PDF page free to use?
- Yes. Every Kaamko tool is free, with no sign-up, no account and no usage limit. They are published by Imperial College of Engineering, a Tribhuvan University-affiliated engineering college in Tathali, Bhaktapur, and are not funded by advertising.
- Does what I type get sent anywhere?
- No. This tool runs entirely in your browser: the calculation happens on your own device, nothing you type is uploaded, and nothing is stored after you close the page.
- Where do the figures come from?
- Each tool names its source on the page, along with the date that source was read. Where a rate or a slab is provisional — announced in a budget speech but not yet gazetted, for instance — the page says so rather than presenting it as settled.
- Who maintains these tools?
- Imperial College of Engineering, formerly Janakpur Engineering College, in Tathali, Bhaktapur, Nepal. Corrections are welcome by phone on 01-5091616 or through the contact page, and a figure reported as wrong is checked against its published source rather than adjusted on request.
Last checked by Imperial College of Engineering. Rates, slabs and formulas are re-checked against their published source on this date.