[OLPC India] Devanagari Effort

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Sun, 2007-10-14 at 09:08 -0700, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 14, 2007 at 12:42:50PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:

<..snipped>

> 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.
> 

Yes - there are quite a few "quirks" one needs to get used to while
working with phonetic layouts. Eg: almost all Indic scripts have at
least four contenders for the 'T' key, the Devanagari ones being ta,
tha, tta, and ttha.

> 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.
> 

Agreed. In fact http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Devanagari_Keyboard suggests
that Inscript is the chosen layout. 

Warm regards,
Sayamindu


-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings