I spent a few minutes today figuring out how to put the Indian Rupee sign (₹) in a LaTeX document. The XeLaTeX engine allows you to use TrueType/OpenType fonts in LaTeX. The Ubuntu font family has the Rupee symbol. I find that the ‘light’ font variant, scaled to 95% goes well with LaTeX’s default Computer Modern font.
Here’s a small example that combines the two. Download the Ubuntu fonts and extract the Ubuntu-L.ttf file to the same folder as the following LaTeX source. Then process with xelatex.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{newunicodechar}
\newfontfamily{\ubuntu}[Scale=0.95]{Ubuntu-L.ttf}
\newunicodechar{₹}{{\ubuntu ₹\thinspace}}
\begin{document}
Sita gave Gita ₹100.
\end{document}The newfontfamily command from fontspec sets up the Ubuntu Light font. If this font is installed as a system font on your computer, you can actually skip the font download step and replace the line by
The newunicodechar command from the package of the same name ensures that the text {\ubuntu ₹\thinspace} is substituted for the ₹ characer in your document. The substitution text changes fonts, inserts the symbol and a thin space to separate the symbol from the following amount.
An alternative is to use the tfrupee package which does not require XeLaTeX. But I find its version of the symbol too dark when used with Computer Modern. Also, tfrupee requires you to use a \rupee command instead of the symbol itself, making the source more noisy.