Is there documentation anywhere for the Hindi/Devanagari keyboards in iOS?

Thanks again. Yes, the Hindi Transliteration keyboard looks to be very useful – certainly for Hindi, but also for Sanskrit and Pali, though using it for those requires paying close attention to avoid errors. 

It's not exactly transliteration though, as there is no way to enter the diacritics used in precise Latin transliteration from Devanagari. More accurate would be "transcription", since the user enters how the Hindi word sounds to an English speaker. Then the user chooses among the offerings, to get the correct version of e.g. "n" (of which there are several in Indic languages – n, ṇ, ṅ, ñ – thus in Devanagari).  

I learned this distinction in working with Tibetan, where the actual sound of a word is often quite different from what might be suggested by the Wylie transcription. Which is an excellent system, making possible the very useful Tibetan - Wylie input keyboard in macOS. But I often must resort to THL's excellent Tibetan Phonetics Converter to find out how a word actually sounds. E.g. the common Tibetan greeting བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས་, which transliterates as "bkra shis bde legs" in Wylie, but is pronounced "Tashi delek" ("auspicious blessing"). (Well, I see the phonetic converter gives "tra shi dé lek", but anyway it's closer than the Wylie.) 

And yes, an explanation of why those Indic scripts are prohibited would be interesting. I was thinking it was because of the complex consonant conjuncts, but if, as you mention in the other thread, Sinhala – which also includes such conjuncts (as in ශ්‍රී ලංකා) – is accepted, that cannot be the reason. 

Hi, Tom. Good to see you're still offering your excellent help. Yes, iOS 15.8.2 on my iPad Air 2 offers Hindi — Transliteration (A➝), but no QWERTY Devanagari keyboard, which is what I've been using in macOS. 

Thanks to your post on "Transliteration Keyboards for Languages of India", I now know how to use the Hindi transliteration keyboards in both macOS and iOS. 👏 They even handle (kartsnya, "attraction", an extreme example of Devanagari conjunctions), so I guess they would work for Sanskrit. 

They can also be used for Pali, which is the Indic language (of the Buddhist scriptures) I mostly play with, but it takes a little figuring, as they're not exactly programmed for it. Anyway, unlike Sanskrit, Pali – of course originally an Indian language, but little used there now – is mostly written in the native scripts of its speakers – Sinhala, Burmese, Thai, etc. – as well as IAST Latin in the West. Or sometimes in Brahmi – the closest we have to the written language of the Buddha's time – which I like to do. 

Thanks for your helpful response. 

𑀲𑀩𑁆𑀩𑁂 𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑀸 𑀪𑀯𑀦𑁆𑀢𑀼 𑀲𑀼𑀔𑀺𑀢𑀢𑁆𑀢𑀸 

Sabbe sattā bhavantu sukhitattā 

May all beings be happy

Andrew Main

Hi, Tom. Good to see you're still offering your excellent help. Yes, iOS 15.8.2 on my iPad Air 2 offers Hindi — Transliteration (A➝☐)*, but no QWERTY Devanagari keyboard, which is what I've been using in macOS. 

Thanks to your post on "Transliteration Keyboards for Languages of India", I now know how to use the Hindi transliteration keyboards in both macOS and iOS. 👏 They even handle ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐* (kartsnya, "attraction", an extreme example of Devanagari conjunctions), so I guess they would work for Sanskrit. 

They can also be used for Pali, which is the Indic language (of the Buddhist scriptures) I mostly play with, but it takes a little figuring, as they're not exactly programmed for it. Anyway, unlike Sanskrit, Pali – of course originally an Indian language, but little used there now – is mostly written in the native scripts of its speakers – Sinhala, Burmese, Thai, etc. – as well as IAST Latin in the West. Or sometimes in Brahmi – the closest we have to the written language of the Buddha's time – which I like to do. 

*When I tried to post this reply as originally composed, I received the dreaded "You have included content in your post that is not permitted." After considerable experimentation (and frustration) I've determined that apparently Apple Community does not allow posts containing characters in the Devanagari script, as the two such instances in the post – the (A➝☐) (where the ☐ represents the Devanagari "a" character) in the first paragraph, and the Sanskrit word "kartsnya" in Devanagari in the second paragraph (shown by ☐s) – each render the text non-postable. In both cases, the Devanagari material was produced in macOS, using the standard Devanagari input keyboards. Even odder is that the Pali text in the obscure Brahmi script (for which there is no entry system nor font in macOS (though the font is included in the set of Google Noto Fonts that now come with macOS) apparently is not a problem for Apple Community. Whut? Is it truly not possible to post Devanagari text in Apple Community?

Also, I intended to post this as a reply to Tom's second response below, but in all the confusion it ended up here, So here goes. Okay, so it was saved, now below Tom's second response where I originally wanted it. But I can't delete the first one above – which is no longer editable. I give up.

Thanks for your helpful response. 

𑀲𑀩𑁆𑀩𑁂 𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑀸 𑀪𑀯𑀦𑁆𑀢𑀼 𑀲𑀼𑀔𑀺𑀢𑀢𑁆𑀢𑀸 

Sabbe sattā bhavantu sukhitattā 

May all beings be happy

Andrew Main

[Edited by Moderator]