typing Sanskrit

[tantrapl at hektor.umcs.lublin.pl]

Thank you all for taking interest in BO.

Pullat Devadas Das have asked for the actual rendering of the whole sequence
of marks in BO. Here you are:
 
a, aa, i, ii,   u,  uu,  r_,  r_r_, l_, l_l_, e, ai, o, au,
k, kh, g, gh, n-, 
c, ch, j, jh, n~, 
t, th, d, dh, n, 
t_, t_h, d_, d_h, n_, 
p, ph, b, bh, m,  
y, r, l, v, 
s-, s_, s, 
h, h_ (visarga), 
m- (anusvara),  [if necessary: m=  (anunaasika), l-] .


In response to Jacob Cejka' letter:
 
> On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Leslaw Borowski wrote:
> 
> > I don't quite understand. 1) You don't have to put diacritical marks BEFORE
> > writing a letter (which goes against normal practice)
> 
> I wonder what means "normal practice here". My native tongue is one of 
> those which use the latin alphabet with various diacritics. On the 
> typewriter
 
> I wonder how one can say it is unnatural. In handwritten Czech we put 
> diacritics afterwards and in typed before and no one complains about 
> either way being unnatural.  
Well, most of man's activity is not purely "natural". What I mean by natural
way of writing is the order of marking diacritics in the handwritten form.
Why I call it "normal practice"? For 1) I compare number of people who can
write with a pencil with number of people who can type; 2) I notice people
who can type with no exception can write with a pencil. So, all people (with
possible few exceptions) start with writing diacritics after a given letter
that need it. For them to get accustomed to mark diacritical mark  the way 
typewriter demands is not natural. You may call it "second nature" etc. but the
fact seems to be it is not convenient for most people (maybe for you or a
few other natural talents this is not true).

> Not only the diacritics, note that the Indian scripts write even the 
> vowel signs of the syllable-letters (which are somewhat analogical to 
> diacritics in fonological scripts) before the consonant sign (short i 
> everywhere and e in the East and South). Is that unnatural? 
If you are interested in my humble opinion - YES, it is unnatural. For that
simple reason the way people speak is different from the way they write. Shall
I elaborate?
 
> And in music most of the auxiliary or modificatory signs are written 
> before the actual note sign ...  
Composers rather don't type their compositions while composing them. And I
don't say you cannot learn all those systems. I say they very often go
against your earlier customs (in that sense they are unnatural) which makes
them inconvenient.
		Regards,		
			Leslaw Borowski
PS Polish also has diacritical marks as many other languages and if I
remember it right one either uses separate fonts or writes the way you
described it.


 ______________________________________________________________________________
> Mr. Jakub Cejka
> Dept. of Sanskrit, University of Pune
> Ganeshkhind, Pune, India  411 007
> 
> e-mail:  jakub at unipune.ernet.in   (till July 97 the latest)
> 
> 
> 
>