Velthuis' Devanagari 1.5 for TeX on Macintosh

[Elliot Stern]

Recently, I have been attempting to use Frans Velthuis DevanAgarI for TeX
version 1.5, together with the Devanagari preprocessor for Macintosh (dated
1 March 1997) on OzTeX 3.1 to produce a Sanskrit text edition. After
inputting several folia from the second chapter of the text successfully, I
decided to go back to the first chapter of the text, convert the text
encoding to the Velthuis scheme, enter the necessary LaTeX commands,
including commands to preserve footnotes in the previously entered version,
and produce a text only version (no wordprocessing formats carried over
from the Nisus source document).

The results so far are not quite satisfactory. When I run the Devanagari
preprocessor, I get error messages telling me that there are various
illegal characters in the document (one is @A), but the preprocessor
otherwise successfully converts the document. Searches in the source
document fail to locate this or the other illegal characters.

When I have TeX run the document produced by the preprocessor, it
encounters problems in the text, especially in the 9 point footnotes. For
example, there is a sequence nmU that occurs in the text in 11 point. This
sequence appears in the preview in correct Devanagari type. In the 9 point
footnote, however, I get an error message. The preview fails to give the
full sequence nmU. It gives the Devanagari for mU instead.

In the 11 point text, the sequence Dvi comes out as an unacceptable
sequence of the ligature for i, D (with a virAmaH) and va.

TeX sets only a little more than the first page of output from my many
pages ofmaterial before it gives up.

I hope that someone more experienced in the use of these software
components can offfer some advice. I suspect that part of the problem may
be that the Devanagari preprocessor for Macintosh is out of date for use
with DevanAgarI 1.5. If that is the case, is anyone working on an update of
this preprocessor? Also, is it possible that my text only, Velthuis scheme
encoded, LaTeX document has hidden formats or other hidden illegal
characters carried over from the Nisus document that are causing some of
the problems?

Thanks in advance for any help offered on the Indology list, or through
private communication.

Elliot M. Stern
552 South 48th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19143-2029
USA

telephone: 215 747 6204