[INDOLOGY] Devanagari keyboard

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Actually, no, Patrick, the shift is only for retroflex consonants.  No
shift keypress is required for the conjuncts.  And one is going to have to
use *something* to distinguish retroflexes.

Modern script-rendering software knows all about viramas, which is how it
can build a conjunct without having to be told.  If you actually *want* a
virama on the screen, you just type a consonant with a following space (no
vowel).  Which seems totally logical to me, and requires no superfluous
keypresses.  So typing "karman " -> "कर्मन्"

Basically, every time you type "f", you are doing something you don't need
to do, from a technical point of view.  It's a labour overhead imposed by
poor software design.

Dominik


--
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Department of South Asia, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies<http://stb.univie.ac.at>
,
University of Vienna,
Spitalgasse 2-4, Courtyard 2, Entrance 2.1
1090 Vienna, Austria
and
Adjunct Professor,
Division of Health and Humanities,
St. John's Research Institute, <http://www.sjri.res.in/> Bangalore, India.
Project <http://www.istb.univie.ac.at/caraka/> | home
page<http://www.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>|
HSSA <http://hssa.sayahna.org> | PGP <http://wujastyk.net/pgp.html>





On 13 November 2013 17:00, Patrick Olivelle <jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu> wrote:

> Dominik:
>
> Actually when you get used to it, it is quite fast and simple. In your
> case you have to use Shift in order to make conjunct, which also includes
> an extra keystroke. The reason for "f", I assume, is that Devanāgarī
> assumes the vowel "a" after a consonant, unless there is a virāma; and "f"
> has that function. So, if you really want a virāma -- you type the
> consonant and "f" and give a space.
>
> Patrick
>
>
>
> On Nov 13, 2013, at 9:20 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm slightly appalled by what I'm hearing about typing "f" in between
> every conjuncted letter.  That must make typing a terrible pain!
>
> All our modern operating systems have built-in stuff for making conjuncts
> automatically by just typing the letters one after another (as in
> romanization).* <http://behdad.org/text/>  I don't understand why MS Win
> and OS/X users are doing this other, laborious thing.  Am I missing
> something obvious?
>
> When I type Devanagari, I type kRSNa and get कृष्ण, kArtsnyam for
> कार्त्स्न्यम् . It's the same whatever program I'm using,  because the
> keyboard/language stuff is handled by the operating system, not each
> individual program.  As far as I know, anyhow.  It's handled by software on
> my system, Ubuntu Linux, called Ibus and m17n (which comes with Devanagari
> and IAST romanization already pre-defined).
>
> Dominik
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> http://listinfo.indology.info
>
>
>


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20131114/dc312b0e/attachment.htm>