Lao Font Information

Lao Unicode

Lao fonts are used to write and display Lao (also known as Laotian).

The Arial Unicode MS font (distributed with Microsoft products) does not appear to work correctly due to problems with the accents and the zero-width vowels.

This page does not focus on the technical parts of how Lao fonts were created or the fundamentals of Lao Unicode.

Download Saysettha Unicode Lao Font

The Saysettha OT (True Type) font is based on the popular Saysettha Lao typeface but using standard Unicode encoding and OpenType features, it has been optimized especially for web use. Users are permitted to download, install and re-distribute this font so that Lao web sites can be created and used more easily.

Download Saysettha OT (True Type) font Copy the font to your fonts folder, located in control panel and go to www.google.la which should be displayed in Lao.

Lao Language Support in Windows Vista

Microsoft Windows Vista includes keyboard mapping support for Lao and the Lao Unicode (OpenType) font Dok Champa, but neither Windows Vista nor Microsoft Office 2007 provide any automatic text-wrapping capability, or any way of converting existing documents that were created with older types of Lao fonts.

If you only need the ability to send or receive Lao by email, and only occasionally enter Lao text in documents (and are familiar with the standard Lao keyboard layout), then the Lao font and input capabilities of Windows Vista may be sufficient for your needs

Lao Script for Windows

Lao Script for Windows (also known simply as LSWin) is an extension to the Windows operating system to make it easy to use Lao language with many different Windows applications.

Lao Script for Windows includes both Unicode and non-Unicode Lao fonts, and a keyboard mapping application that automatically wraps Lao text at word boundaries with compatible applications. When used with Microsoft Word, Lao spell-checking, sorting according to Lao dictionary order and font conversion are available as menu functions. Similar capabilities are available for other Microsoft Office applications, and can be added for many other applications through use of the Lao Script for Windows function library.

Non-Unicode Lao Fonts

Pre Unicode Lao fonts for legacy documents

LaoFonts is a collection of five Lao fonts of various styles, available in TrueType, postscript, and bitmapped forms for both the Macintosh and Windows provided by Yamada Language Center.

Download non-unicode Lao fonts

External Links

Useful links related to Lao fonts, Lao Unicode and Open Type