Type Sanskrit Diacritics on Your Touch Screen Device (iPhone, etc.)

[Pratyatosa]

Introductory note: For the text boxes on both <http://llbest.com/?P=71> and <http://pratyatosa.com/?P=45>, tapping the space bar (or the semicolon) button on any touch screen device (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, etc.) sets you up for typing special "hotkey" characters, including the Sanskrit diacritic characters. To type a space, you have to tap the space bar twice. On non-touch-screen devices, such as your desktop or laptop computer, these same 2 web pages use only the semicolon key for this purpose.

Dear Prabhus, Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

I've been putting this off because I thought that it would be extremely time consuming and difficult, but once I got started, it turned out to be fairly easy. The "hotkey" part had already been done several days ago, but it was implementing the email "Send" button that I was putting off. I didn't want to announce this facility until the email capability had been added, because spending a lot of time entering text on a smart-phone, for example, requires a reliable method for periodically saving the text.

See the 1st forwarded message below. It's an email that I sent to myself from my iPod touch while on the <http://pratyatosa.com/?P=45> web page.

As you can see, all 31 of the official ISKCON Sanskrit diacritic characters were produced on the iPod touch's keyboard! The text was produced using only the alphabetical keyboard, which, like the iPhone, contains only the 26 letters of the English alphabet, the shift, the space bar, and the return buttons.

Here are the 2 strings of characters that I typed to produce the output shown below:

 q w e r t y u i o p a s d f g h j k l z x c v b n m

 Q W E R T Y U I O P A S D F G H J K L Z X C V B N M


NOTE: For the lower-case letters, after tapping the space bar, keep your eye on the up-arrow (shift) button. If it is "lit up," then you have to tap it before tapping the letter button. It will always be lit up at the beginning of the text and after an end-of-sentence character (return, period, exclamation point, or question mark).

If you don't have any Sanskrit diacritics to type, then you might still find <http://llbest.com/?P=71> useful. It works in exactly the same way, but instead of the Sanskrit diacritics, it has even more punctuation characters plus the 10 numeric digits. (See the 2nd forwarded message below.) <http://llbest.com/?P=71> uses only the lower case characters as hotkeys.

This should save you some time because, although you have to tap the space bar twice to get a space, to get most number and punctuation characters you only have to tap twice instead of 3 times.

Your servant, Pratyatosa Dasa

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <DoNot...@bharani.dreamhost.com>
Date: 2012/2/2
Subject: <Pratyatosa.com/?P=45> Text Box Contents
To: praty...@gmail.com


"?)ṛṭñūī;.āṣḍ,ṅḥ'@ḷṝ-ś:(ṇṁ

 Q W EṚṬÑŪĪ O PĀṢḌ FṄḤl̐ KḶṜ XŚ V BṆṀ


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <DoNot...@bharani.dreamhost.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:28 PM
Subject: <LLBest.com/?P=71> Text Box Contents
To: praty...@gmail.com


"?5()&$I;.1[46780@']-3:2,!


The above is the output in the <http://llbest.com/?P=71> web page's text box when typing the following on my iPod touch's keyboard:

q w e r t y u i o p a s d f g h j k l z x c v b n m