Mangal font mismatch and formatting under a 15-minute limit
A candidate must prepare a one-page Hindi notice in a 15-minute practical test. Requirements: A4, 1-inch margins, Mangal 14 pt, 1.5 line spacing, title centered in bold, date right-aligned, two paragraphs with first-line indent, and a footer with page number. The candidate's practice machine uses Krutidev 010, but the exam machine has no Krutidev font and opens the file in Mangal/Unicode. She has typed about 120 words in Krutidev at home and is fast, but on the exam machine the matras look correct on screen while she types; after saving and reopening, some reph and half forms shift. She has 15 minutes; formatting from scratch will take 4 minutes, typing 8 minutes, proofreading 2 minutes. She considers typing first in Krutidev on another machine and copying, but no external media is allowed. She also considers using the spacebar to center the title and right-align the date because she cannot find the alignment buttons quickly.
1. What is the root cause of the shifting matras, and what should she do before typing?
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The root cause is a font-encoding mismatch. Krutidev 010 is a legacy non-Unicode font; Mangal is a Unicode font. The same visible character may be produced by different code points, and reph, halant and half forms can reorder or shift when text is opened in a different font. The screen may look acceptable during typing but change after saving and reopening because the document is being reinterpreted under the new font.
Before typing she should confirm that the exam document is set to Mangal or another Unicode Hindi font, set the font before entering text, and avoid copying Krutidev text from another machine. If some Krutidev text is already present, she should select it, apply Mangal, and inspect every conjunct and matra rather than assuming the conversion is clean. She should not use an external machine or media because the rules forbid it. The safe approach is to type directly in the exam environment and check a few reph/halant words immediately.
2. Critique her formatting plan and give a realistic time budget.
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The spacebar plan is unsafe. Centering with spaces and right-aligning a date with spaces depends on the current font and paper size; if the font changes or the file is reopened, the alignment drifts. It also creates extra characters that may be counted as errors. She should use paragraph alignment: center for the title, right-align for the date, left-align for body paragraphs, and a first-line indent for each paragraph. Margins, font and 1.5 line spacing should be set before typing so she does not have to reformat everything later.
A realistic 15-minute budget is: 1 minute page setup, 7–8 minutes typing, 2–3 minutes formatting, 2 minutes proofreading, and 1 minute saving and checking print preview. Formatting after typing is acceptable for alignment, but page setup and font must be done first. She should also verify that the footer page number is inserted as a field, not typed manually.
3. At minute 6 she discovers the document is still in Krutidev, not Mangal. What recovery sequence should she follow?
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She should not retype the whole notice. First, select all text and change the font to Mangal. Second, inspect the high-risk places: reph, halant, half forms, and matra combinations such as ि/ी and ु/ू. Third, fix only the words that are visibly wrong; retyping a garbled word in Mangal is safer than trying to repair individual code points. Fourth, reapply paragraph formatting if the font change disturbed line spacing or indents. Fifth, save and reopen the file once to confirm that the text is stable, because the original symptom appeared after reopening.
She should then use the remaining time for formatting and proofreading, not for a full conversion attempt. If the deadline is close, prioritize the title, date, margins and footer, because those are explicit requirements. The lesson for future attempts is to set the Unicode font before typing and to test a reph/halant word in the first minute.