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Hello,
I am looking for a Devanagari (Sanskrit) Alphabet Font which I can use under Windows (preferably TrueType, but I'll take what's available).
My searches through cyperspace revealed nothing so far, but I'm sure somebody has put together such a font (I've searched at CICA, the Dharma archive, Windows Online, etc.) The only thing even remotely close that I've found is a Bengal font, but this is NOT the same.
So, if you know of where I could obtain it, either freeware, shareware, or commercial, please do let me know. Of course, I'd even accept bitmaps of the individual characters of the alphabet if I have to as I will eventually convert them to bitmaps anyway (a long story, but I'd rather start with the font).
BTW, I want the real Devanagra alphabet, not a Romanized (Westernized) version of the alphabet. I believe there are 48+ characters in the Devanagra alphabet, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Much thanks in advance!
Jon Noring OmniMedia
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In article <omnimdiaCx9xK0....@netcom.com> omnim...@netcom.com (OmniMedia) writes:
>BTW, I want the real Devanagra alphabet, not a Romanized (Westernized) version >of the alphabet. I believe there are 48+ characters in the Devanagra >alphabet, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Devanagari is a little more complex than that, especially if you intend to use bitmaps.
First, the vowel markers are appended to the consonantal characters, and in several cases modify them to a greater or lesser extent.
Second, there is a large collection of consonantal ligatures, many more than the basic list in the EB. You should look at Gonda's _Sanskrit Primer_ for a good list of the ligatures.
Third, Devanagari is a syllabary rather than an alphabet. That is to say, each "consonantal" character represents the consonantal followed by the vowel "a" unless another vowel sign is appended, or the stroke which means "no following vowel at all."
If you go for a bitmapped font, you will probably find you end up with more than 500 different characters. -- Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo- logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or what not. --J. R. R. Tolkien, alder...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
In article <aldersonCxBCD3....@netcom.com>, alder...@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) wrote:
> Third, Devanagari is a syllabary rather than an alphabet. That > is to say, each "consonantal" character represents the > consonantal followed by the vowel "a" unless another vowel sign > is appended, or the stroke which means "no following vowel at > all."
Namaste! Permit me to add that the sound denoted by "a" in the above description is not of the "a" in "father," "fat," "fate," "saw," etc. Instead, it is the slightest continuation of the sound of the "consonant" being pronounced.
