Open Source · Language Technology
TermaType
Prototype · AGPL-3.0
A free, open-source professional word processor built entirely for Tibetan script. Native on Windows, macOS, and Linux. No subscription. No license fee. No Windows-only restriction.
6M+
Tibetan Speakers
316K+
Dictionary Entries
64
Dictionary Sources
AGPL
Open Source License
The Problem
Every tool that exists was built for someone else. The word processors were designed for English. The keyboards were patched together by volunteers and abandoned. The one software ever made specifically for Tibetan was built decades ago, runs only on one operating system, costs money, and has not meaningfully changed since.
Writers, monks, scholars, and students make do. They use workarounds. They accept that something will break — a character that won't stack correctly, a cursor that loses its place, a font that gives up halfway through a word. They have learned not to expect better.
For a language spoken by over six million people — a language that carries one of the world's great philosophical and literary traditions — this is a remarkable gap.
Why Now
Inside Tibet, Tibetan-medium schooling has collapsed. Enrollment in Tibetan-medium schools fell from nearly 24,000 students in 2012 to around 13,000 in 2024 — a 45% drop in twelve years. Tibetan language classes have been removed from curricula across entire prefectures.
This means the diaspora — the communities in Dharamsala, in New York, in Europe, in the monasteries and schools outside Tibet — is increasingly the primary carrier of the written tradition. The scholars, the translators, the teachers, the monks writing commentaries, the journalists, the parents trying to write letters to their children in Tibetan: they need a professional tool.
They don't have one. TermaType is that tool.
What It Includes
Things no other tool offers in one place.
Type Tibetan directly using standard QWERTY keys, with automatic consonant stack building and vowel placement. No OS-level driver required — works on any machine, any platform.
A panel that searches 64 Tibetan dictionaries and 316,000+ entries as you write, pulling from Monlam, Rangjung Yeshe, Jäschke, Hopkins, 84000, and more.
Designed for how Tibetan text actually works — stacks, vowel marks, tsheg boundaries — not how English text works.
Save, open, and share documents that work with other tools. No proprietary lock-in.
Every character output is standard Unicode, compatible with archives, libraries, and digital preservation systems.
If Funded
Seeking funding to bring TermaType to a stable, distributed release.
Native Desktop App
Code-signed installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Automatic updates. Notarized so your operating system trusts it.
Standalone Tibetan IME Library
The keyboard input system extracted as an independent open-source library. Any developer building a Tibetan-language app can use it freely.
Tibetan Spell-Check
Integration with Botok, the open-source Tibetan morphological analyser — something no freely available Tibetan tool has ever offered.
Offline Dictionary
A bundled dictionary for working without internet. The lookup panel works everywhere, always.
Pecha Layout Mode
Support for the traditional Tibetan book format — long horizontal pecha pages, correct margins and line spacing, proper multi-column layout.
Documentation
A user guide in Tibetan and English — written for monks, students, journalists, teachers, and scholars.
Open Source, Always
TermaType will be released under the AGPL-3.0 open-source license. Everything we build — including the IME library — will be freely available for anyone to use, study, adapt, and improve.
This is not a product. There is no business model. It is infrastructure for a language that needs it.
The dictionary powering the lookup panel — 64 sources, 316,000+ entries — is built and maintained as part of the Tibetan Library project. The fonts are open source. The code will be public. Every piece of this is designed to outlast any single organisation or individual.
Status
We have a working prototype running right now. This is not a concept — it's software that exists. We are seeking funding to bring it to a stable, distributed application.
If you are a Tibetan studies scholar, educator, translator, or community organisation who would like to be involved in beta testing, we would love to hear from you.