Introduction

This document describes the use of a package which makes it possible to print characters from the Devanagari script. The package consists of font files, a preprocessor and macro files. It is used with the typesetting system TEX¹ or the macro package LaTeX. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with TEX. The next two sections explain what you need to know about creating Devanagari text. The last section (Advanced Topics) can be skipped on first reading.

A source file for TEX consists of plain ASCII-text. With the devanagari package it has been a design-objective to keep the format of the source text as close as possible to the accepted standards for transliteration. However, symbols like ā and ṛ are not available on keyboards and have to be replaced by other symbols or groups of symbols. The table in the following section shows what has to be entered in order to produce a certain devanagari (Called DN from now on) symbol. A source text which is produced this way has to be processed by a so-called preprocessor before it can be given to TEX as input. This preprocessor takes care of things like determining the shape of vowels, the formation of consonant ligatures etc.

The preprocessor can work in two different modes: Hindi mode or Sanskrit mode. The difference is that in Sankrit mode all the available ligatures are used, while in Hindi mode sometimes a virama stroke is preferred. Furthermore, in Sanskrit mode a virama is automaticaly added at the end of a word if it ends in a consonant.

Acknowledgement: I would especially like to thank Rob Adriaanse, Hans Bakker, Roelf Barkhuis, Henk van Linde and Dominik Wujastyk for their advice and support.

Please send suggestions for improvement etc. to:

E-mail: velthuis@rc.rug.nl
Postal Mail:
Frans Velthuis
Nyensteinheerd 267
9736 TV Groningen
The Netherlands