To understand why FM fonts are so deeply embedded in Sri Lankan computing, we need to look at the technological landscape of the 1990s. Unicode, which we now take for granted as the universal text standard, was in its early stages of development and had virtually no software support. Computers running Windows 3.1 and early Windows 95 had no built-in ability to display Sinhala script.

The Pre-Unicode Problem

Sri Lankan businesses, newspapers, and government offices needed to produce Sinhala documents on computers. Without Unicode support, developers had to find creative workarounds. The solution was font encoding — repurposing the standard ASCII character set to display Sinhala characters instead of Latin letters.

When you pressed the "k" key and the font displayed a Sinhala character, the computer still stored the ASCII code for "k". The font was doing all the heavy lifting of visual substitution. This approach required no changes to the operating system and worked on any computer that could install a custom font.

Rise of FM Fonts

FM fonts, developed by a Sri Lankan software company, became the dominant standard for Sinhala computing. Fonts like FM Abhaya — named after a traditional Sinhala script style — became installed on computers across the country. Newspapers, the Department of Official Languages, universities, and government ministries all adopted FM fonts as their standard for Sinhala document production.

By the early 2000s, millions of pages of Sinhala content had been created using FM fonts. The typing method was taught in schools and offices. An entire generation of Sinhala typists learned the FM font keyboard layout as their primary method of Sinhala input.

The Arrival of Unicode

Unicode support for Sinhala was added in Unicode 3.0, released in 1999. However, operating system support lagged behind. Windows XP introduced improved Unicode rendering, and Windows Vista added the Iskoola Pota Sinhala Unicode font. Slowly, the ecosystem began to support Unicode Sinhala natively.

The transition was gradual and is still ongoing. New documents created today should use Unicode, but the vast archive of FM font documents — accumulated over two decades — remains in the old format.

FM Fonts Today

In 2026, FM fonts remain relevant because of this enormous legacy archive. Government departments still maintain FM font records. Older employees who learned FM font typing continue to use it. Printed materials like books and newspapers from the FM font era need to be digitized.

This is exactly why FM font to Unicode conversion tools are valuable — they bridge the gap between the old archive and the modern Unicode world, preserving the content while making it universally accessible.