If you have ever received a Sinhala document that looked like random symbols on your screen, the cause is almost certainly an FM font. Understanding the difference between FM fonts and Unicode is essential for anyone who regularly works with Sinhala text.

What Are FM Fonts?

FM fonts were developed in the 1990s and 2000s as a practical solution for Sinhala computing before Unicode support was widely available. The "FM" stands for the company that created them. Fonts like FM Abhaya, FM Malithi, and FM Bindumathi became the standard for Sinhala typing in Sri Lanka for over a decade.

The way FM fonts work is by repurposing the standard ASCII character set. When you type the letter "k" on your keyboard, instead of displaying "k", the FM font displays a specific Sinhala character. This means the underlying data stored in the document is actually the English letter "k", but it visually appears as Sinhala because the font replaces it.

This approach worked well in isolated environments — if everyone in your office had the same FM font installed, documents would look correct. However, it created serious long-term compatibility problems.

What Is Unicode?

Unicode is an international standard that assigns a unique code point to every character in every human language. For Sinhala, Unicode defines specific code points for each letter, vowel sign, and punctuation mark. The Sinhala Unicode block spans from U+0D80 to U+0DFF and covers all 91 characters of the Sinhala script.

When text is stored as Unicode, the actual Sinhala character data is saved — not a proxy ASCII character. This means the text displays correctly on any device, operating system, or application that supports Unicode, regardless of which font is installed.

The Core Difference

Real-World Problems with FM Fonts

The practical consequences of FM fonts are significant in everyday use:

Email and messaging: If you copy FM font text from a Word document and paste it into Gmail or WhatsApp, the recipient sees gibberish like "wxi fohla lkak" instead of the intended Sinhala text.

Websites: FM font text cannot be displayed on websites. The internet operates on Unicode, so any Sinhala content intended for the web must be in Unicode format.

Archiving and search: FM font documents cannot be searched for Sinhala words. Searching for "ශ්‍රී ලංකා" in a folder of FM font documents will return no results, because the stored data contains no Sinhala characters.

Mobile devices: Modern smartphones do not support FM fonts. Sinhala content on Android and iOS must be in Unicode to display correctly.

Why FM Fonts Are Still Used

Despite their limitations, FM fonts remain in use in Sri Lanka for several reasons. Many government institutions, newspapers, and businesses built up large archives of FM font documents over the years. Retyping all this content was not practical, so the documents remain in the old format.

Additionally, some older keyboards and typing habits were designed around FM font layouts. Users who learned to type Sinhala using the FM system sometimes find it difficult to switch to Unicode keyboard layouts.

How to Convert FM Fonts to Unicode

The most straightforward way is to use our FM Font to Unicode converter. Simply paste your FM font text into the tool and it will automatically map each character to the correct Unicode equivalent. The conversion supports FM Abhaya, FM Malithi, and FM Bindumathi.

After conversion, always proofread the output, as complex ligatures and special characters may occasionally need manual correction depending on the source document quality.