Typing Devanagari

OS X comes with keyboards and fonts that let you type and read languages written in Unicode Devanagari script (Hindi, Nepali, Marathi, Sanskrit, and others). Also there is a language kit in OS 9 that allows you to work in Devanagari in Classic mode. Note that only the Devanagari fonts provided by Apple can be used: Windows fonts for this script require a different rendering technology and will not display correct Devanagari on a Mac. An exception is the program OpenOffice. See this note.

Although outdated in various ways, the manual for the OS 9 Indian Language Kit contains much useful information. It can be downloaded at:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50037

The methods used to input special character forms in Devanagari can be summarized as follows:

To generate default conjuncts, type the first character followed by the Halant (also called Virama) key, then the next character. To generate explicit half-forms for alternative conjuncts, or independent half-forms, type the character followed by the Halant key and the Nukta key. To generate an "eyelash RA," type RA plus Nukta plus Halant. To generate a Nukta consonant, type the character plus Nukta. To prevent conjuncts, type two Halants.

Note that the Halant/Virama key is the D key on Devanagari keyboards and the F key on Devanagari-QWERTY keyboards. The Nukta key is the ] key on Devanagari keyboards and the Shift-F key on Devanagari-QWERTY keyboards. RA is the J key on Devanagari keyboards and the R key on Devanagari-QWERTY keyboards.

To make special conjuncts used in Sanskrit, you can try using the OS9 font Devanagari MTS in 10.3. In 10.4 you can try selecting the font Devanagari MT in the Font Panel, going to Advanced (gear wheel) > Typography, and checking the box for Additional Conjuncts. For additional info on Sanskrit, see:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/sanskrittest.html

OS 9 and Tiger come with a Nepali keyboard. You can get another one for OS X at:

http://www.mpp.org.np/download_details.php#mac

Some OS X Applications that can do Devanagari are TextEdit, Pages, Keynote, Mail, Address Book, iChat, iTunes, iMovie5, FCE, FCP, Nisus Writer Express, NeoOffice/J, OpenOffice 2, Create, GoodPage, iCalamus, and several other Cocoa programs. Applications which do not work include AppleWorks, Mellel, MS Office, most Adobe and MacroMedia apps, and Quark. Flash will work if you compose the text elsewhere and import it.

Bugs: OS X 10.2 has serious input bugs in Devanagari, so it is essential to use at least 10.3. 10.3.0 cannot do half-consonant forms via Halant plus Nukta, but this was corrected in one of the later updates. The Devanagari MT font that comes with OS X does not seem able to do Nukta consonants with Repha. However the font Devanagari MTS that comes with OS 9 does these correctly. Nuktas may be misplaced in some combinations with U or OO Maatra (not sure exactly what is correct). Devanagari file names do not display correctly in the OS X Finder. 10.4 fixes the filenames and Nukta plus Repha problem, but Tiger Mail has a new bug and apparently can't do conjuncts via consonant plus Halant. 10.4 also has new bugs in TextEdit that turn certain vowels into blank squares before certain r-consonant-vowel combinations, though Pages seems to work OK.

Pitfalls: If you do not know the Devanagari script but nonetheless need to work with text in one of the languages that use it, be aware that it is easy to produce garbage that may not be obvious to you -- for example letters in the wrong order, with the wrong shape, and not connected the right way. In such case it is important to have someone who does know the script take look at the final product.