kmos: How to Type 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.

Although outdated in various ways, the manual for the OS 9 Indian Language Kit contains much useful information.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 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 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.

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, AbiWord, NeoOffice/J (with patch-1a), Create, GoodPage, and several other Cocoa programs. Applications which do not work include AppleWorks, MS Office, all Adobe and MacroMedia apps, and Mellel.

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.