Why not a definitive devnagri font

[ucgadkw at ucl.ac.uk]

On Fri, 15 Mar 1996 20:16:04 GMT Aditya wrote:

>I have come across a new product called Beyondmail that would allow
>email using any font. 

The place I work has had Beyondmail installed for the past year, and it is not a
very nice package in my view.  Oh, it has a lot of features, but it is very
clumsy to use, and doesn't allow easy quotation and comment on replies.

About the fonts: Beyondmail allows one to use any installed windows font, it is
true, but such information only gets passed to other Beyondmail users on the
same local network, not to people on the internet generally.

So we are back to mime, which is still not so widely supported that one can rely
on people in general having it. 

Finally, for a scheme such as you suggest, everyone would have to buy or acquire
the *same* Devanagari font and display software.  Unrealistic.  

I'm afraid 7-bit transliteration will be with us in our internet communications
for a while yet.

>Since this list is frequented by the academic community interested in
>the use of Devnagri fonts, I would request that we should set up a
>consensus on the Devnagri font assignments so that we can exchange
>information in  Devnagri script.

I would vote for using the Velthuis transliteration, which is simple, as good as
any, and at least allows those with TeX or ITRANS to get Devanagari out of the
text without too much fiddling.

Dominik

--
Dominik Wujastyk