Velthuis' font

[aklujkar at unixg.ubc.ca]

Making an excuse of the recent posting regarding improvements in Velthuis'
devanaagarii font, I would like to suggest that an improvement, originally
suggested by Dr. Gary Tubb, should be made in Velthuis' conventions for
Roman transliteration. 

The palatal sibilant (commonly anglicized as "sh" and at present
transcribed on the Indology list as ""s", that is, with a double quotation
mark preceding "s") should be transcribed as ";s", that is, with a
semicolon preceding "s".

The palatal nasal (the sound coming after "c," "ch," "j" and "jh") can then
be consistently transcribed as ";n". 

For the guttural nasal ":n", tha is, "n" preceded by colon, should serve
well.

These changes would free up the double quotes for their normal use and also
make the transcription of nasals easier and unambiguous. 

I particularly appreciate the fact that  Velthuis scheme leaves the
capitals or upper key letters available for their established use in Roman
printing. 

For the benefit of those who do not know what Velthuis  system at present
is, I reproduce below the latest statement I have:
I. Velthuis's conventions are as follows:
1) LONG VOWELS ARE DOUBLED. (This also happens to be phonetically correct.)
#The vowels of Sanskrit, then, are a, aa, i, ii, u, uu. An exception to the
doubling rule occurs with long vocalic r, which is encoded .R
2) CONSONANTAL DIACRITICS PRECEDE THE CONSONANTS MARKED BY THEM. Thus the
retroflex class of vowels and consonants is written: .  .r .t .th .d .dh .n
.s  Visarga is written: .h   The palatals that take diacritics are: ~n and
"s  [My suggestion, following Tubb: ;n, ;s] The guttural nasal is written:
"n [my suggestion, following Tubb: :n]
3) DA.N.DA IS WRITTEN |

INDOLOGY should continue to use Velthuis  conventions and should not create
confusion through the use of a variety of Devanaagarii fonts (I am not
opposed to the use of Devanaagarii if a standard, almost universally
accepted system for its use in electronic communication emerges).