BV Mudranaಮುದ್ರಣ
Page layout for Kannada, Sanskrit and English, that opens your PageMaker books.
BV Mudrana works the way PageMaker 7 did, with its menus, toolbox and shortcuts, and writes real Unicode text. Old Nudi, Praja, Chanakya and Nalanda text becomes Unicode as the file opens, set in fonts made from the same letterforms.
- 4 to 7PageMaker versions it opens
- CS4 to 2026InDesign versions, through IDML
- 5old font encodings made Unicode
- 20Brahmavidya font faces included
Bring old text into Unicode
These are the converters inside BV Mudrana, running in this page. Paste text that was typed in an old font, or switch direction and turn Unicode back into the old code for an old workflow.
Opens the files you already have
A PageMaker book from 1998, an InDesign file from the press, a Word manuscript in Nudi: each opens with its pages, frames and styles in place, and you choose what happens to every old font before anything changes.
Opens
- PMD P65 PM6
- PageMaker 6, 6.5 and 7. Pages, masters, threaded text blocks, styles, tabs, colours, lines, boxes, cropped TIFF and JPEG pictures.
- PM5
- PageMaker 5, read directly. PageMaker 4 opens through PageMaker 7 on the same computer.
- IDML
- InDesign CS4 to 2026. Masters, layers, swatches, styles, threaded frames, groups, rotation, linked pictures.
- INDD INDT INX
- InDesign documents, through the InDesign installed on the computer.
- DOCX RTF TXT
- Word and text files placed or converted, keeping bold, italic and styles.
Saves
- BVM
- BV Mudrana publications and templates, with automatic recovery of unsaved work.
- PMD P65 PMT
- Back to PageMaker 7 and 6.5, with Unicode turned back into the old Nudi, Praja or Chanakya code.
- IDML
- For InDesign, with the World-Ready composer set so Kannada and Devanagari shape correctly there.
- INDD
- InDesign documents and templates when InDesign is installed.
- PDF HTML
- Print-ready PDF with the fonts embedded, HTML, graphics and tagged text.
Everything in its compartment
The tools of a typesetter’s case, sorted the way you reach for them.
PageMaker, as you remember it
The same nine menus, the fourteen-tool toolbox, the control palette, windowshade handles on text blocks, master pages, Autoflow, Story Editor and PageMaker’s keyboard shortcuts. People who set books in PageMaker for twenty years start working at once.
- Smart open: every old font is surveyed and a Unicode font and size suggested, measured on your own text so lines break where they did
- Text blocks start with exactly the text they had in PageMaker
- Save back to PageMaker 7 when the press still needs it
Kannada keyboards built in
Nudi KGP and phonetic Kannada, phonetic Devanagari and IAST. Scroll Lock switches, as in Nudi.
Sanskrit tools
Śloka and IAST styles, transliteration between Kannada, Devanagari and IAST in one keystroke, Vedic signs in the Glyphs palette.
Publications in tabs
Open several files at once. Ctrl+Tab moves between them; Ctrl+Shift+T brings back the one you closed.
Reflow and fit
Overset text flows onto new pages in the page’s columns. Fit Frame to Text, Balance Columns, text wrap.
Find and Change
Across bold and italic, whole words in Kannada and Devanagari, regular expressions, Find Font.
Footnotes, index, contents
Footnotes numbered in Kannada or Devanagari digits, an index, a table of contents, running heads.
Smart Guides
Objects snap to the edges and centres of other objects while you drag, as in InDesign.
Live preflight
A light in the status bar counts missing fonts, missing pictures and overset text before the press does.
From Scribus, Word and LibreOffice
Pages and Outline palettes, Align and Distribute, tables, gradients, a Library, Data Merge, Format Painter, typographer’s quotes, sticky notes for proof comments, a watermark and page border, Read Aloud.
Your own name on it
Tell BV Mudrana your name when you install it. The start screen says Namaste, and the title bar reads as your own Mudrana.
Four ways to work, seven looks
Choose the interface that fits the person at the keyboard. Every mode has every command; only the way in changes.
Fonts made at Brahmavidya, included
Each one keeps the letterforms of a font people already printed with, now as Unicode. BV Mudrana installs them in Windows for your account, so Word and every other program can use them too. Click a line and type your own text.
From the old file to a clean page
How it grew
Each version installs over the one before with a small update file. Nothing has to be uninstalled.
- 0.9
Publications in tabs, a new start screen, InDesign IDML and INDD, PageMaker 5, Chanakya and Nalanda to Unicode in BV Chitkala and BV Nanda, Smart Guides, live preflight, BV Matanga.
- 0.8
Reflow overset text, Find and Change with regular expressions, Find Font, Format Painter, fields and special characters, watermarks, Read Aloud, your name on the title bar.
- 0.7
Praja (Prajavani) fonts: Praja Unicode, Praja01 to Praja08, Praja documents in Word and RTF, and updates that install over the old version.
- 0.6
Four interface modes and seven themes, from Material You to Classic PageMaker 7.
- 0.5
Smart open with measured font sizes, Kannada keyboards, footnotes, more PageMaker formatting kept.
- 0.4
PageMaker’s menus drawn in the window, Pages, Outline, Align and Glyphs palettes, tables from Scribus.
- 0.3
Save as PageMaker 7 and 6.5, the Brahmavidya Kannada converter everywhere.
- 0.2
Opens PageMaker 6.5 and 7 files and turns Nudi text into Unicode Kannada.
Download BV Mudrana 0.9.2
Free from Brahmavidya. Install it once with the Setup file; after that, each new version comes as a small Update file that installs over the old one and keeps your settings.
- Windows
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. About 115 MB to install.
- Optional: PageMaker 7
- Needed only to save .pmd files and to open PageMaker 4 files.
- Optional: InDesign
- Needed only for .indd files. IDML works without it.
- Fonts
- Praja Unicode, Praja01 to Praja08, BV Chitkala, BV Nanda and BV Matanga are installed for you.