As someone who has worked on Indic fonts (Tamil and Devanagari as well as roman transliteration) from the early 80’s and the time of the Lisa, I’d like to add my thoughts. It is wonderful to be able to use unicode for all the diacritical marks we need for all devices and operating systems (though as noted sometimes when you have several on the same letter they do not transfer well), but I don’t see that using them is particularly easy when you have to press many keys at once. Perhaps one can get up to speed this way, but option-(x) is pretty unsatisfactory, and option-shift-(x) even more so.

I don’t know all the keyboard layouts that are available for roman transliteration of various South Asia languages (and, for this forum, Sanskrit especially). I would hope some are easier to use than option-shift-(x). The best solution, I think, is to use a dead key. That way, you don’t have to keep one key pressed down while you press another. I have a very simple keyboard layout for the Mac (which still works in Sierra) that uses forward slash as a dead key. /a gives ā, // gives /, /r gives ṛ, /h gives ḥ, etc. Any keyboard like this is easily constructed using Ukulele, a free Mac app, as many on this forum know. If anyone wants to try it out, here it is — https://www.dropbox.com/s/twsgq6xayubqbxa/IndianRomanUnicode.keylayout.zip?dl=0. It can easily be modified with Ukulele to add, for example, Vedic accents. I hope it may prove useful to some scholars. (Unzip the file, put it in Library/Keyboard Layouts and activate it in Language and Region in System Preferences). Unfortunately, there is no way to get it to work in iOS that I have found, and, of course, it doesn’t work on Windows, though it should not be too hard to make a similar layout for that OS.

I find myself somewhat allergic to Word, whether on Windows or the Mac (even the newest version). I use Nisus Writer Pro, which is written entirely using the MacOS development system rather than cobbling together things that have various other provenances (making Indic fonts unworkable on most Mac versions of Word). I find NWP absolutely indispensable and recently produced a camera-ready pdf of my translation of the Akanāṉūṟu it. I recommend it highly. George


On Jul 16, 2016, at 9:50 AM, David Mellins <dmellins@gmail.com> wrote:

I'd also like to thank everyone who has clarified Sanskrit diacritical inputs in El Capitan. Big relief!

David
)
On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 7:14 AM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:
Another happy discovery yesterday was that OpenOffice for Mac is able to display characters with multiple markings like ā̃́, ī̃́, ū̃́, ṝ̃́ etc.  So, if one is writing something that needs characters with such multiple markings on Mac, it is possible to do a document in OpenOffice and save it as a pdf to preserve these character-markings.  I hope someday MS Word for Mac will be able to do that.  At least, for now, we can happily do Unicode Devanagari on MS Word for Mac.

Madhav Deshpande

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 1:41 AM, Valerie Roebuck <vjroebuck@btinternet.com> wrote:
Yes, It took me a while to work that out. I was on the phone to a baffled person at Apple trying to explain about my Sanskrit diacritics no longer working when the penny suddenly dropped.

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

On 16 Jul 2016, at 03:38, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:

Hello Hans, 

     Evidently the ABC Extended Keyboard on El Kapitan operating system is the same as the US Extended Keyboard on Maverick and older operating systems, with just a different name.

Madhav

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 8:49 PM, Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock@illinois.edu> wrote:
Have you tried the US Extended keyboard, Madhav? 

I use Times New Roman, which works very well with unicode

All the best

Hans

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2016, at 16:25, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:

Hans,

     Just tested your suggestions with ABC Extended keyboard layout, and this does work in TextEdit and in Gmail, but not in MS Word.  I tried to copy and paste from EextEdit into Word, and the Word was not able to show the stacking of three diacritics like ā̃́.  Glad to know that such combinations are possible at least on some platforms.  Thanks, Hans, for solving one of my long-standing problems.  With best wishes,

Madhav

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 5:15 PM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:
Hello Hans,

     Which keyboard-layout are you using to produce these characters?

Madhav

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock@illinois.edu> wrote:
Dear Madhav, 

Though there may be some limitations on stacking, it is possible to produce the following symbol on the Mac (still system 10.9.5): ā̃́. The first diacritic (the macron) is accessed by typing option a + a; the other two diacritics by entering shift-option n and shift-option e AFTER having typed assembled the basic ā character. This post-character shift-option input procedure doesn’t seem to be well advertised; I more or less stumbled upon it in some university’s instructions for its faculty. 

There is one concern, however: While ā and the like is treated as a single glyph in unicode and thus transfers well between unicode-compatible platforms, more complex character, such as ā́, ā̃, or ā̃́, are not single glyphs and may therefore not transfer across platforms. We ran into this problem in producing the documents from which the new South Asia volume in the series World of Linguistics have been printed, and the only thing that we could do was submit a pdf-version indicating the desired character shape.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Hans


On 15 Jul 2016, at 13:13, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:

This is a question as to how to get multiple markings on the same vowel sign.  In my pre-Unicode diacritics font Manjushree-CSX, I had included, for instance, the sign for vowel "a" with three markings, length, nasality and accent.  This is necessary to represent Pāṇinian procedures accurately. Pāṇini deals with eighteen varieties of "a, i, u, ṛ" etc. differing in length, accent and nasality. Is there a way to do this with unicode fonts and keyboards?

Madhav Deshpande

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Jeffery Long <dharmaprof108@yahoo.com> wrote:
The ABC Extended keyboard on the Mac is good for all diacritical marks.  Combining the option key with a gives the macron: ā, ī, etc.  Option + x = underdot: ṃ, ṣ, etc.  Option + w = overdot: ṅ.  Option + e = accent mark: ś.  Tilde is of course option + n: ñ.

All the best,
Jeff
 
Dr. Jeffery D. Long
Professor of Religion and Asian Studies
Elizabethtown College
Elizabethtown, PA


Series Editor, Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical
Lexington Books
Consulting Editor, Sutra Journal
http://www.sutrajournal.com

"One who makes a habit of prayer and meditation will easily overcome all difficulties and remain calm and unruffled in the midst of the trials of life."  (Holy Mother Sarada Devi)



On Friday, July 15, 2016 9:17 AM, Jonathan Silk <kauzeya@gmail.com> wrote:


Maybe indeed I'm missing something but the Asian Extended keyboard (made, if I am not wrong, by Nobumi Iyanaga) works perfectly for diacritics, no mess, no fuss.

Jonathan

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:
David,

     The old Easy Unicode keyboard-layout does work on my Mac that has the latest operating system and the latest MS Office 360.  Try reinstalling the keyboard file, if you have it.  If not, I can send it to you.  Best,

Madhav

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 8:44 AM, David Mellins <dmellins@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, This is true, but have you found a convenient way to enter the full range  of diacritica for Romanized Sanskrit without having to resort to Emoji/Latin/favorites inserts? 

This is not the worst thing in the world, but slower than the old Easy Unicode or Dev Unicode keyboards.

David

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 15, 2016, at 8:37 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm shocked.  I don't pay much attention to the Mac world, but I've been typing Devanagari into everything on my computer for many years (Linux).  I had no idea that this wasn't possible or easy on a Mac.  Wow.  And the Mac used to be the byword for multilingual support.  I'm glad it's okay now, at least.

Dominik

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk*
Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
 University of Alberta, Canada


On 15 July 2016 at 12:58, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:
Dear Indologists,

     To my happy surprise, I found that with the combination of the latest version of Microsoft Office 360 for Mac and the latest Mac Operating System OS X El Capitan, it is now possible to directly enter Unicode Devanagari in a Word document with the Devanagari - QWERTY keyboard layout.  Previously, I had to enter Unicode Devanagari in something like TextEdit and then copy and paste into a Word document, but was not able to edit it in the Word document.  The new development of software has happily changed that situation.  Hope this information will be of use to some of you.  Best,

Madhav Deshpande

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