How to Fix Garbled Indic Text, Kotakota Boxes, and Question Marks in Word and InDesign

Encountering garbled text when opening an older Kannada Word document, InDesign project, or website is one of the most frustrating experiences in desktop publishing. Whether your text displays as English gibberish, question marks (???), or empty rectangular boxes (kotakota), the underlying issue is always an encoding or font mismatch.

By Ravikirana Byadarahalli · RV Anveshana LLP

1. Symptom: Text Displays as English Gibberish ("PÀ£ÀßqÀ")

Why this happens: This is the classic symptom of Nudi, Baraha, or ISFOC ASCII text opened in a modern Unicode font like Nirmala UI or Noto Sans. Because the text data is stored as raw Latin byte values, a Unicode font reads "P" as Latin capital P, "À" as Latin accented A, etc.

The Fix: Do not try to re-type the document manually! Copy the garbled text into the Lipi Nudi/ISFOC to Unicode Converter. Lipi instantly reconstructs the underlying Indic phonetic syllables and generates clean, universal Unicode text in milliseconds.

2. Symptom: Empty Rectangular Boxes (Kotakota / Tofu ▯)

Why this happens: Empty rectangular boxes (often nicknamed "tofu" or "kotakota" in Kannada printing circles) indicate that the font you have selected lacks the specific character glyph requested by the document.

The Fix: Switch your active font to a certified, full-coverage Kannada Unicode font from the Lipi Catalog (such as Tunga, Kedage, Mallige, or Anek Kannada). Every font on Lipi is verified to contain 100% of the Unicode Kannada character block (U+0C80–U+0CFF).

3. Symptom: Subscript Letters (Vattus) Disconnected or Broken

Why this happens: Complex Indic scripts require OpenType GSUB (Glyph Substitution) and GPOS (Glyph Positioning) rules to properly stack consonant conjuncts. In older graphic applications (like older Photoshop or CorelDraw versions), Indic shaping is turned off by default.

The Fix: In your graphic software settings, navigate to Preferences → Type → Choose "World-Ready Composer" (or "Middle Eastern & South Asian composer"). This tells the software to activate OpenType conjunct shaping.