The Difference Between Unicode and Krutidev
Unicode (Mangal) is a universal character encoding standard. It assigns a unique number to every character, ensuring Hindi text looks exactly the same across all devices, browsers, and operating systems. If you type Hindi on a smartphone keyboard, you are typing in Unicode.
Krutidev (or Devlys) is a legacy, non-Unicode font. Instead of using actual Hindi character encodings, it replaces standard English alphabet slots with Hindi glyphs. For example, typing "k" on a standard English keyboard produces the Hindi letter "ा" when the Krutidev font is applied.
Typing Exams and Krutidev
Because Krutidev is mapped directly to the physical keys of a QWERTY keyboard (similar to the traditional Remington typewriter layout), many Indian government typing tests still use it to evaluate typing speed and accuracy.
If you've drafted a document on Google Docs (Unicode) but need to print or submit it in a legacy format, you cannot simply change the font to Krutidev in MS Word—it will turn into English gibberish. You must use a converter like this tool to mathematically map the characters first.