Thai font · FREE

JS Jindara

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · July 4, 2026

Information verified as of July 2026

What JS Jindara is

JS Jindara is a free, GPL-licensed looped Thai text face from the JS Technology family — the fonts that trace back to the first Thai-language desktop publishing software. It is a light, monoline body-copy sans released to the public in 2006, per the Thaifaces specimen.

The JS family carries real history. JS Technology was co-founded by the late Sawaeng Tantiraphan (the “S”) and physician Panutat Tejasen, known as “Doctor Jimmy” (the “J”), and its fonts date to the era when Thai desktop publishing had to be built from scratch. According to Thaifaces, after Microsoft built Thai support directly into Windows, the successor company 315 Co., Ltd. closed and Sawaeng Tantiraphan passed away; the JS fonts were then dedicated to the public and published free under GPL Version 2 in B.E. 2549 (2006).

The jeffmcneill/thai-font-collection repository dates the original JS Technology fonts to 1993–2003 and credits Panutat Tejasen, Seveng (Sawaeng) Tantiraphan, and Pongsathorn Sraouthai, with later modifications by ReEncode and Lanna Innovation Co., Ltd. That makes JS Jindara a genuine artefact of the pre-Sarabun generation of free Thai type.

Character design and tone

JS Jindara is a light, monoline looped (มีหัว) Thai text face: conventional loop terminals, even stroke weight, and quiet proportions built for body copy rather than display. The rendered specimen reads closer to a document face than to anything drawn for branding.

Consonants keep their traditional looped heads, so characters like ก, ด, and ม stay unambiguous at text sizes — the classic argument for looped faces in long-form reading, covered in our Thai typography guide. The monoline stroke means there is little weight contrast to carry a headline; set large, JS Jindara looks thin and utilitarian rather than expressive.

The Latin companion is a plain sans-serif covering A–Z, a–z, Arabic numerals, and Thai numerals (๐–๙), which is enough for mixed Thai–English documents, dates, and figures, though it has none of the bilingual polish of modern sans-serif Thai releases.

Weights and availability

JS Jindara ships as four TrueType files — Normal, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic — i.e. two weights, each with an oblique companion, per the jeffmcneill/thai-font-collection repository. The circulating JS-Jindara-Normal.ttf carries the internal version string “Version 1.1; 2001” and the notice “Copyright (c) ReEncode by P-chanSoft, 2001”, so the digital files predate the 2006 free release.

There is no official foundry site distributing it today; JS Technology’s successor closed. The practical source is the thai-font-collection repository on GitHub, which distributes the JS Technology fonts as free software under GNU GPL v2 or later. JS Jindara is not on Google Fonts and has no official webfont build.

Best use cases

JS Jindara suits Thai body-copy settings — documents, legacy print layouts, and projects that want a period-correct 1990s–2000s Thai document voice. Reasonable briefs:

• Thai-language documents and internal print materials where a free looped text face is required
• Retro or archival design work referencing the Thai DTP era the JS fonts came from
• Long-form Thai reading text where looped letterforms aid recognition
• Projects studying or preserving the free Thai font heritage catalogue

Where it doesn’t fit: display and branding work (the monoline light weight carries no headline presence), and modern web products — for those, Sarabun or TH Sarabun New give the same looped body-text role with contemporary engineering and simpler licensing, and Kanit covers the loopless display end.

Pairings

Pair JS Jindara’s quiet looped body text with a stronger loopless display voice for hierarchy. Sensible combinations:

• Kanit — geometric loopless Thai sans for headlines over JS Jindara body copy
• Prompt — rounder loopless display alternative when Kanit feels too rigid
• Sarabun — as a modern stand-in when JS Jindara’s four-file family runs out of weights

Licensing

JS Jindara is free software: the JS fonts were dedicated to the public and published under GPL Version 2 in 2006, and the thai-font-collection repository distributes them under GNU GPL v2 or later. You can download, use, modify, and redistribute the files under the terms of the GPL v2; download from the thai-font-collection repository.

Note the license is GPL, not the SIL OFL used by most modern free Thai fonts. If your project needs the more familiar OFL terms — especially for webfont deployment — Sarabun and Kanit are the straightforward open alternatives in the same roles.

Information verified as of July 2026