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
\newfontfamily{\ubuntu}[Scale=0.95]{Ubuntu Light}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.