[OLPC India] Devanagari Effort

[Joshua N Pritikin]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2007 at 12:42:50PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> The most common keyboard layout for Devangari is Inscript, something
> standardised by the DOE, government of India in 1986.

> Apart from Inscript, for users who are accustomed to QWERTY, there is a 
> layout called Bolnagri, which follows a semi phonetic scheme (ie,
> Devanagari alphabets are mapped to keys which have similar sounding
> mappings in QWERTY as well. eg: क (ka) is mapped to 'k', and so on).

I learned Inscript and prefer it because it seems more predictable than 
a phonetic layout. Because of the mismatch between English and 
Devanagari, you can't easily predict what is phonetic according to the 
designer of the phonetic layout. However, most of the Indians I've met 
(I am American) find the phonetic scheme easier to learn.

I vote for using Inscript on the keyboard. Even though the learning 
curve is a bit steeper, it's a more logical layout than any phonetic 
layout.

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