What’s the best way to preserve old Hindi documents digitally?

[arseo]

I've been sorting through some old Hindi documents recently and noticed that many of them were typed using legacy fonts instead of Unicode. The content looks fine on older systems, but once the files are opened on modern devices or shared online, the text often becomes unreadable or completely distorted.

This seems to be a common issue with archived notes, office files, study material, and typing documents that were created years ago. Since many modern applications and websites now support Unicode by default, older font-based text doesn't always display properly anymore.

To make the files easier to use across devices, I started converting the text from krutidev to unicode before saving or sharing the documents digitally. It made a noticeable difference because the text became readable on phones, browsers, and newer operating systems without needing special fonts installed.

I'm curious how others handle older Hindi files:

Do you still keep documents in legacy font format?
Or do you convert everything into Unicode now?
And what's the easiest way to preserve readability for long-term use?