This was originally written by Santhosh Thottingal and published at Thottingal.in.

A new version of Manjari Malayalam typeface is available now. Version 1.800 adds tabular number and slashed zero opentype features along with bug fixes.

New version of the font is available at: https://smc.org.in/fonts/#manjari

Tabular numbers

The Kerala health department publishes daily COVID-19 reports and they use Manjari(example). Sometimes the numbers in table in Manjari font is slightly difficult to read when you want to compare the numbers in columns across rows. This is because each digit will take a proportional horizontal space and not fixed width.

tnum opentype feature helps to get fixed width tabular numbers in contexts like above.

Slashed zero

While working with numbers, sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between 0,o,O,ഠ. It helps if 0 has a slash in it. New version of Manjari adds this alternate glyph using opentype feature zero

These features can be used in applications that support selecting them(most of the applications do.).

CSS and webpages

Use font-feature-settings: "tnum"; or font-feature-settings: "zero";. To select both, use font-feature-settings: "tnum", "zero";

Libreoffice

In font selector, give the font name as Manjari Regular:tnum or use font settings dialog

Inkscape

In text and font dialog(Control+Shift+T), go to Variants tab, Under Numbers, tick, Tabular, Slashed zero options.

Xelatex:

Use addfontfeature

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\newfontfamily{\manjari}[Script=Malayalam]{Manjari}
\begin{document}
\manjari{\addfontfeature{Numbers={Monospaced,SlashedZero}}01234}
\end{document}

MS Word, Phtotoshop, Indesign, Illustrator

See this article and this article

Here is an image showing tabular and slashed zero.

Manjari already supports some stylistic variants too. See this blog post