Re: [m17n-list] Trying to create a more optimal Indic input method.

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Hi, Vishvas,

Actually, I use Devanagari a lot of the time, and all the time for the Sanskrit texts that I critically edit.   I was one of the people involved in the development of "Velthuis" Devanagari, the first Devanagari font ever available for TeX;  I used it for my PhD.   I do also use IAST, for articles aimed at journals published in Europe and America, and for Wikipedia etc. Independently of output script, I sometimes type my input in IAST, sometimes Devanagari, and sometimes Velthuis. 

I did not write the IAST system for m17n keyboarding.  Praise due to someone else.

Does nationality really come into this issue?  Geography, perhaps?  I mean, there are also millions of *Indian* users who have no use for Kannada or Devanagari script.  Many Bengalis or Tamils are Indian but don't read Kannada or Gujarati, etc.   Maybe you just meant, "in India."

Something that might help your interesting keyboard-input project forward would be to give it a nice name.  And the output can be any, or a series of Indic scripts, I suppose.

Best,

Dominik

On 20 June 2015 at 15:49, विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki) <address@hidden> wrote:

Let me emphasize that at this point, I can be helped most by just getting this file to work!






====================
That said, I'll be happy to keep or change key assignments based on experiences of users (myself at this point) and analysis.

Thanks for the review, Dominik! To address your concerns:

* This is targeted at scripts *Indian* users tend to use: devanAgarI and kannaDa in my case. I use IAST rarely, so I am happy to use whatever is available there (written by you, I believe).

* The main improvement I want over the existing ITRANS-based input scheme is to type the key 'a' less often (about 13/20 times less in Sanskrit). I want to be able to write कमल with just kml, rather than kamala; and शङ्कर with shnakara.

* So there is this focus on efficiency while retaining other ideals such as phoentic intuitiveness and backward compatibility with other schemes.

* I want to retain (less optimal) redundancies to allow compatibility with older, far more popular input methods such as ITRANS, BARAHA, HK; so that interested people can transition without being put off by a (relatively steeper) learning curve.

* ङ् and ञ् are almost always followed by characters of the same varga, such as शङ्कर and सञ्चित. So, one almost never ends up typing ~N and ~n. For example: one just types shnakara and snacita (or snachita) to get शङ्कर and सञ्चित. So, the inefficiency in ~N and ~n is outweighed by its familiarity to ITRANS users. I'm open to adding more efficient alternatives too.

=====================

2015-06-20 6:12 GMT-07:00 Dominik Wujastyk <address@hidden>:

It seems to me there are many redundancies and infelicities in this scheme.  That ~N and ~n yield chars in different vargas, for example, or that prepended ~ (that requires shift on most keyboards) is used instead of ; (that does not require shift and is therefore much easier to type for the common ś character.  .Dh is a redundancy - two codes where either .dh or Dh would be enough. Etc. 

Maybe I've misunderstood.  I'm not even sure whether you are aiming at Devanagari output, or one of the other schemes like IAST.

Dominik

​

--

--
Vishvas /विश्वासः