If I need to check a string has unique characters, I understand if we are considering characters in Ascii table, then there will 128 of them.

However, why do we need to make a boolean array of size 256 to hold 128 characters to check if element existed at least once in a string? Shouldn't a boolean array of size 128 sufficient?

Here's a quote from from the book 'Cracking the Coding Interview':

...

5 Answers

Basically, we use only 128 total character which is used mostly during program.But total number of Character in ASCII table is 256 (0 to 255). 0 to 31(total 32 character ) is called as ASCII control characters (character code 0-31).32 to 127 character is called as ASCII printable characters (character code 32-127). 128 to 255 is called as The extended ASCII codes (character code 128-255).

check reference: http://www.ascii-code.com/

Most of the extended ASCII character isn't present in the QWERTY (ENGLISH) keyboard, so this is the reason, author took 128 total character in that example in 'Cracking the coding interview' book.

No, there are 256 ASCII characters. This includes standard ASCII characters(0-127) and Extended ASCII characters(128-255).

For More Info. Please refer to:http://www.flexcomm.com/library/ASCII256.htm

Many people these days use the term 'ASCII' in a sloppy fashion to describe ISO-8859-1 (also known as Latin-1), a character set that includes the [32 . 126] printable-character values in the old-timey ASCII character set and also values in the range [128.255]. Latin-1 does a reasonably good job of covering Western European languages, whereas ASCII is limited to the non-accented characters used in basic English.

ASCII also includes control characters in the range [0-31] and 127. These don't represent printable characters (although unicode provides characters at those positions). They are return, linefeed, tab, ctrl-c, formfeed and the like. Some of them are holdovers from the olden days of teletype and telex machines.

Notice how the paper tape has eight bit positions in each frame. Those are the bits of ASCII / Latin-1. 'Delete' aka Rubout is 127 or 0111 1111. Why? because it was possible to punch out all seven holes in the tape and so rub out a character.

That may account for the suggestion someone made to use a 256-position array to tabulate text in that kind of character set.

I believe the use of 128 and 256 in the same function is a mistake in that book edition. In the newer 6th edition (2016), the code example states:

and the author adds the comment:

It's OK to assume 256 characters. This would be the case in extended ASCII.

So, use either 128 or 256, not both, for that book exercise.

The author probably confused characters and bytes. You should also understand the related concept of encoding.

Hitman pro 3.8.0 product key. Hitman Pro 3 will quickly show if your PC is infected with malicious software.

A byte is eight bits. A byte was traditionally often used to store a character, though very early computers only required 7 bits to store a character. The ASCII standard for encoding characters in 7 bits was ratified in 1963, though at the time there were also competing character encodings (of which EBCDIC still survives to this day).

When you only use 7 of the available 8 bits, you might have ideas for what to do with the spare bit. One of the common approaches was to encode additional non-standard characters which were not available in the ASCII standard. A large number of legacy 8-bit encodings have been defined, some of which have been published as standards as well. Some are popular even to this day; some examples are ISO-8859-1 (aka Latin-1) and the Windows code pages (437, 850, and 1252 are still in common use in Western countries, despite their many drawbacks). Many of them are 'extended ASCII' encodings which are compatible with ASCII in the first 128 bytes; though the term 'extended ASCII' is not really technically well-defined.

If you are processing a sequence of bytes, you do want to be able to cope with byte values in the range 0-255 and not just the ones which are defined in ASCII. On the other hand, if you have guarantees that none of the bytes you are going to process will have values above 127 (such as, for example, if your input is known to be ASCII because it comes from a source which is incapable of producing anything else), it is excessive to reserve room for values you know you are not going to need.

Going forward, most modern systems use Unicode in one form or another. On Windows, and apparently still in Java, you should expect UTF-16; elsewhere, UTF-8 is rapidly becoming the de facto standard. Both of these require your code to be able to handle 8-bit bytes cleanly, though the code points are not (necessarily, in UTF-8, or ever, in UTF-16) encoded in a single byte.

As for the code you posted, you are correct that 128 character positions is enough if you discard any byte whose value is larger than 127. On the other hand, depending on what data you expect to process, discarding non-ASCII characters may not at all be the right thing to do; and then, if you don't discard anything, you do need to handle all 256.

Either way, if you only discard values larger than 128, you need 129 positions in the array (there are 129 integers in the range 0 through 128). This is probably just a silly off-by-one bug.

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Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəri/DAY-və-NAH-gər-ee; देवनागरी, IAST: Devanāgarī, Sanskrit pronunciation: [deːʋɐˈnaːɡɐɽiː]), also called Nagari (Nāgarī, नागरी),^[4] is a left-to-right abugida (alphasyllabary),^[5] based on the ancient Brāhmī script,^[1] used in the Indian subcontinent. It was developed in ancient India from the 1st to the 4th century CE,^[1] and was in regular use by the 7th century CE.^[4][6] The Devanagari script, composed of 47 primary characters including 14 vowels and 33 consonants, is one of the most adopted writing systems in the world,^[7] being used for over 120 languages.^[8] The ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters.^[9]

The orthography of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language.^[8] Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case.^[10] It is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line that runs along the top of full letters.^[5] In a cursory look, the Devanagari script appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali, Odia, or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis.^[5]

Among the languages using it – as either their only script or one of their scripts – are Sanskrit, Hindi,^[11]Nepali, Pali, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi, Haryanvi, Magahi, Nagpuri, Rajasthani, Bhili, Dogri, Marathi, Maithili, Kashmiri, Konkani, Sindhi, Bodo, Nepalbhasa, Mundari and Santali.^[8] The Devanagari script is closely related to the Nandinagari script commonly found in numerous ancient manuscripts of South India,^[12][13] and it is distantly related to a number of southeast Asian scripts.^[8]

• 2History
• 3Letters
  • 3.2Consonants
• 4Transliteration
  • 4.5ITRANS
• 5Encodings
• 6Devanagari keyboard layouts
• 8References

Etymology[edit]

Devanagari is a compound of 'deva' देव and 'nāgarī' नागरी.^[4]Deva meaning 'heavenly or divine', and is also one of the terms for a deity in Hinduism,^[14]Nagri comes from नगर (nagar), which means abode or city. Hence, Devanagari denotes from the abode of divinity or deities.

History[edit]

Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and South-East Asia.^[15][16] Some of the earliest epigraphical evidence attesting to the developing Sanskrit Nagari script in ancient India, in a form similar to Devanagari, is from the 1st to 4th century CE inscriptions discovered in Gujarat.^[1] It is a descendant of the 3rd century BCE Brahmi script through the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada.^[16] Variants of script called Nāgarī, recognisably close to Devanagari, are first attested from the 1st century CE Rudradaman inscriptions in Sanskrit, while the modern standardised form of Devanagari was in use by about 1000 CE.^[6][17] Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of the Nagari-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nagari scripts. For example, the mid 8th-century Pattadakal pillar in Karnataka has text in both Siddha Matrika script, and an early Telugu-Kannada script; while, the Kangra Jvalamukhi inscription in Himachal Pradesh is written in both Sharada and Devanagari scripts.^[18]

The Nagari script was in regular use by the 7th century CE and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium.^[4][6] The use of Sanskrit in Nagari script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in Madhya Pradesh,^[19] and an inscribed brick found in Uttar Pradesh, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the British Museum.^[20] The script's proto- and related versions have been discovered in ancient relics outside of India, such as in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia; while in East Asia, Siddha Matrika script considered as the closest precursor to Nagari was in use by Buddhists.^[9][21] Nagari has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts.^[9] It has long been used traditionally by religiously educated people in South Asia to record and transmit information, existing throughout the land in parallel with a wide variety of local scripts (such as Modi, Kaithi, and Mahajani) used for administration, commerce, and other daily uses.

.^[22] Other closely related scripts such as Siddham Matrka were in use in Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and other parts of East Asia by between 7th- to 10th-century.^[23][24] Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. An early version of Devanagari is visible in the Kutila inscription of Bareilly dated to Vikram Samvat 1049 (i.e. 992 CE), which demonstrates the emergence of the horizontal bar to group letters belonging to a word.^[2] One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from the early post-Maurya period consists of 1,413 Nagari pages of a commentary by Patanjali, with a composition date of about 150 BCE, the surviving copy transcribed about 14th century CE.^[25]

Nāgarī is the Sanskrit feminine of Nāgara 'relating or belonging to a town or city, urban'. It is a phrasing with lipi ('script') as nāgarī lipi 'script relating to a city', or 'spoken in city'.^[26]

The use of the name devanāgarī emerged from the older term nāgarī.^[16] According to Fischer, Nagari emerged in the northwest Indian subcontinent around 633 CE, was fully developed by the 11th-century, and was one of the major scripts used for the Sanskrit literature.^[16]

Southeast Asia[edit]

Most of the southeast Asian scripts have roots in the Dravidian scripts, except for a few found in south-central regions of Java and isolated parts of southeast Asia that resemble Devanagari or its prototype. The Kawi script in particular is similar to the Devanagari in many respects though the morphology of the script has local changes. The earliest inscriptions in the Devanagari-like scripts are from around the 10th-century, with many more between 11th- and 14th-century.^[27][28] Some of the old-Devanagari inscriptions are found in Hindu temples of Java, such as the Prambanan temple.^[29] The Ligor and the Kalasan inscriptions of central Java, dated to the 8th-century, are also in the Nagari script of North India. According to the epigraphist and Asian Studies scholar Lawrence Briggs, these may be related to the 9th-century copper plate inscription of Devapaladeva (Bengal) which is also in early Devanagari script.^[30] The term Kawi in Kawi script is a loan word from Kavya (poetry). According to anthropologists and Asian Studies scholars John Norman Miksic and Goh Geok Yian, the 8th-century version of early Nagari or Devanagari script was adopted in Java, Bali (Indonesia), and Khmer (Cambodia) around 8th or 9th-century, as evidenced by the many inscriptions of this period.^[31]

Letters[edit]

The letter order of Devanagari, like nearly all Brahmic scripts, is based on phonetic principles that consider both the manner and place of articulation of the consonants and vowels they represent. This arrangement is usually referred to as the varṇamālā 'garland of letters'.^[32] The format of Devanagari for Sanskrit serves as the prototype for its application, with minor variations or additions, to other languages.^[33]

Vowels[edit]

The vowels and their arrangement are:^[34]

1. Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasalanusvāraंṃ and the final fricativevisargaःḥ (called अंaṃ and अःaḥ).Masica (1991:146) notes of the anusvāra in Sanskrit that 'there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal stop [..], a nasalised vowel, a nasalised semivowel, or all these according to context'. The visarga represents post-vocalic voiceless glottal fricative[h], in Sanskrit an allophone of s, or less commonly r, usually in word-final position. Some traditions of recitation append an echo of the vowel after the breath:^[35]इः[ihi]. Masica (1991:146) considers the visarga along with letters ङṅa and ञña for the 'largely predictable' velar and palatal nasals to be examples of 'phonetic overkill in the system'.
2. Another diacritic is the candrabindu/anunāsikaँअँ. Salomon (2003:76–77) describes it as a 'more emphatic form' of the anusvāra, 'sometimes [..] used to mark a true [vowel] nasalization'. In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi the distinction is formal: the candrabindu indicates vowel nasalisation^[36] while the anusvār indicates a homorganic nasal preceding another consonant:^[37] e.g. हँसी[ɦə̃si] 'laughter', गंगा[ɡəŋɡɑ] 'the Ganges'. When an akshara has a vowel diacritic above the top line, that leaves no room for the candra ('moon') stroke candrabindu, which is dispensed with in favour of the lone dot:^[38]हूँ[ɦũ] 'am', but हैं[ɦɛ̃] 'are'. Some writers and typesetters dispense with the 'moon' stroke altogether, using only the dot in all situations.^[39]
3. The avagrahaऽअऽ (usually transliterated with an apostrophe) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision of a vowel in sandhi: एकोऽयम्eko'yam ( ← ekas + ayam) 'this one'. An original long vowel lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double avagraha:सदाऽऽत्माsadā'tmā ( ← sadā + ātmā) 'always, the self'.^[40] In Hindi, Snell (2000:77) states that its 'main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout': आईऽऽऽ!āīīī!. In Madhyadeshi Languages like Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, etc. which have 'quite a number of verbal forms [that] end in that inherent vowel',^[41] the avagraha is used to mark the non-elision of word-final inherent a, which otherwise is a modern orthographic convention: बइठऽbaiṭha 'sit' versus बइठbaiṭh
4. The syllabic consonants ṝ, ḷ, and ḹ are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the varṇamālā of other languages. The sound represented by ṛ has also been lost in the modern languages, and its pronunciation now ranges from [ɾɪ] (Hindi) to [ɾu] (Marathi).
5. ḹ is not an actual phoneme of Sanskrit, but rather a graphic convention included among the vowels in order to maintain the symmetry of short–long pairs of letters.^[33]
6. There are non-regular formations of रुru and रूrū.
7. There are two more vowels in Marathi as well as Konkani, ॲ and ऑ, that respectively represent [æ], similar to the RP English pronunciation of <a> in ‘act’, and [ɒ], similar to the RP pronunciation of <o> in ‘cot’. These vowels are sometimes used in Hindi too, as in डॉलरdôlar, 'dollar'.^[42] IAST transliteration is not defined. In ISO 15919, the transliteration is ê and ô, respectively.

Consonants[edit]

The table below shows the consonant letters (in combination with inherent vowela) and their arrangement. To the right of the Devanagari letter it shows the Latin script transliteration using International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration,^[43] and the phonetic value (IPA) in Hindi.^[44][45]

• Rounding this out where applicable is ळḷa (IPA: [ɭ] or [ɭ̆]), the intervocalic lateral flap allophone of the voiced retroflex stop in Vedic Sanskrit, which is a phoneme in languages such as Marathi, Konkani, Garhwali, and Rajasthani.^[46]
• Beyond the Sanskritic set, new shapes have rarely been formulated. Masica (1991:146) offers the following, 'In any case, according to some, all possible sounds had already been described and provided for in this system, as Sanskrit was the original and perfect language. Hence it was difficult to provide for or even to conceive other sounds, unknown to the phoneticians of Sanskrit'. Where foreign borrowings and internal developments did inevitably accrue and arise in New Indo-Aryan languages, they have been ignored in writing, or dealt through means such as diacritics and ligatures (ignored in recitation).
  • The most prolific diacritic has been the subscript dot (nuqtā) ़. Hindi uses it for the Persian, Arabic and English sounds क़qa/q/, ख़xa/x/, ग़ġa/ɣ/, ज़za/z/, झ़zha/ʒ/, and फ़fa/f/, and for the allophonic developments ड़ṛa/ɽ/ and ढ़ṛha /ɽʱ/. (Although ऴḷha/ɭʱä/ could also exist, it is not used in Hindi.)
  • Sindhi's and Saraiki's implosives are accommodated with a line attached below: ॻ[ɠə], ॼ[ʄə], ॾ[ɗə], ॿ[ɓə].
  • Aspiratedsonorants may be represented as conjuncts/ligatures with हha: म्हmha, न्हnha, ण्हṇha, व्हvha, ल्हlha, ळ्हḷha, र्हrha.
  • Masica (1991:147) notes Marwari as using ॸ for ḍa[ɗə] (while ड represents [ɽə]).

For a list of the 297 (33×9) possible Sanskrit consonant-(short) vowel syllables see Āryabhaṭa numeration.

Allophony of 'v' and 'w' in Hindi[edit]

[v] (the voiced labiodental fricative) and [w] (the voiced labio-velar approximant) are both allophones of the single phoneme represented by the letter 'व' in Hindi Devanagari. More specifically, they are conditional allophones, i.e. rules apply on whether 'व' is pronounced as [v] or [w] depending on context. Native Hindi speakers pronounce 'व' as [v] in vrat (व्रत, fast) and [w] in pakvān (पकवान, food dish), perceiving them as a single phoneme and without being aware of the allophone distinctions they are systematically making.^[47] However, this specific allophony can become obvious when speakers switch languages. Non-native speakers of Hindi might pronounce 'व' in 'व्रत' as [w], i.e. as wrat instead of the more correct vrat. This results in a minor intelligibility problem because wrat can easily be confused for aurat,^{[citation needed]} which means woman, instead of the intended fast (abstaining from food), in Hindi.^[47]

Compounds[edit]

Table: Compounds. Vowels in their independent form on the left and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel sign) combined with the consonant 'k' on the right. Chatmonchy has come rar. 'ka' is without any added vowel sign, where the vowel 'a' is inherent. ISO 15919^[48] transliteration is on the top two rows.

A vowel combines with a consonant to form their compound letter. For example, the vowel आ (ā) combines with the consonant क् (k) to form the compound का (kā), with halant removed and added vowel sign which is indicated by diacritics. The vowel अ (a) combines with the consonant क् (k) to form the compound क (ka) with halant removed. But, the compound letter series of क, ख, ग, घ .. (ka, kha, ga, gha) is without any added vowel sign, as the vowel अ (a) is inherent.

Conjunct consonants[edit]

As mentioned, successive consonants lacking a vowel in between them may physically join together as a conjunct consonant or ligature. When Devanagari is used for writing languages other than Sanskrit, conjuncts are used mostly with Sanskrit words and loan words. Native words typically use the basic consonant and native speakers know to suppress the vowel when it is conventional to do so. For example, the native Hindi word karnā is written करना (ka-ra-nā).^[49] The government of these clusters ranges from widely to narrowly applicable rules, with special exceptions within. While standardised for the most part, there are certain variations in clustering, of which the Unicode used on this page is just one scheme. The following are a number of rules:

• 24 out of the 36 consonants contain a vertical right stroke (खkha, घgha, णṇa etc.). As first or middle fragments/members of a cluster, they lose that stroke. e.g. त + व = त्वtva, ण + ढ = ण्ढṇḍha, स + थ = स्थstha. In Unicode, these consonants without their vertical stems are called half forms.^[50]शś(a) appears as a different, simple ribbon-shaped fragment preceding वva, नna, चca, लla, and रra, causing these second members to be shifted down and reduced in size. Thus श्वśva, श्नśna, श्चścaश्लśla, and श्रśra.
• रr(a) as a first member takes the form of a curved upward dash above the final character or its ā-diacritic. e.g. र्वrva, र्वाrvā, र्स्पrspa, र्स्पाrspā. As a final member with टṭaठṭhaडḍaढḍhaड़ṛaछcha it is two lines below the character, pointed downwards and apart. Thus ट्रṭraठ्रṭhraड्रḍraढ्रḍhraड़्रṛraछ्रchra. Elsewhere as a final member it is a diagonal stroke extending leftwards and down. e.g. क्र ग्र भ्र ब्र. तta is shifted up to make त्रtra.
• As first members, remaining characters lacking vertical strokes such as दd(a) and हh(a) may have their second member, reduced in size and lacking its horizontal stroke, placed underneath. कk(a), छch(a), and फph(a) shorten their right hooks and join them directly to the following member.
• The conjuncts for kṣ and jñ are not clearly derived from the letters making up their components. The conjunct for kṣ is क्ष (क् + ष) and for jñ it is ज्ञ (ज् + ञ).

Accent marks[edit]

The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with various symbols depending on shakha. In the Rigveda, anudātta is written with a bar below the line (◌॒), svarita with a stroke above the line (◌॑) while udātta is unmarked.

Punctuation[edit]

The end of a sentence or half-verse may be marked with the '।' symbol (called a daṇḍa, meaning 'bar', or called a pūrṇa virām, meaning 'full stop/pause'). The end of a full verse may be marked with a double-daṇḍa, a '॥' symbol. A comma (called an alpa virām, meaning 'short stop/pause') is used to denote a natural pause in speech.^[51][52] Other punctuation marks such as colon, semi-colon, exclamation mark, dash, and question mark are currently in use in Devanagari script, matching their use in European languages.^[53]

Old forms[edit]

The following letter variants are also in use, particularly in older texts.^[56]

Numerals[edit]

Fonts[edit]

A variety of unicode fonts are in use for Devanagari. These include, but are not limited to, Akshar,^[57]Annapurna,^[58]Arial,^[59]CDAC-Gist Surekh,^[60]CDAC-Gist Yogesh,^[61]Chandas,^[62] Gargi,^[63]Gurumaa,^[64] Jaipur,^[65] Jana,^[66] Kalimati,^[67] Kanjirowa,^[68]Lohit Devanagari, Mangal,^[69] Raghu,^[70]Sanskrit2003,^[71]Santipur OT,^[62]Siddhanta, Thyaka,^[72] and Uttara.^[62]

The form of Devanagari fonts vary with function. According to Harvard College for Sanskrit studies, 'Uttara [companion to Chandas] is the best in terms of ligatures but, because it is designed for Vedic as well, requires so much vertical space that it is not well suited for the 'user interface font' (though an excellent choice for the 'original field' font). Santipur OT is a beautiful font reflecting a very early [medieval era] typesetting style for Devanagari. Sanskrit 2003^[73] is a good all-around font and has more ligatures than most fonts, though students will probably find the spacing of the CDAC-Gist Surekh^[60] font makes for quicker comprehension and reading.'^[62]

Google Fonts project now has a number of new unicode fonts for Devanagari in a variety of typefaces in Serif, Sans-Serif, Display and Handwriting categories.

Transliteration[edit]

There are several methods of Romanisation or transliteration from Devanagari to the Roman script.^[74]

Hunterian system[edit]

The Hunterian system is the 'national system of romanisation in India' and the one officially adopted by the Government of India.^[75][76][77]

ISO 15919[edit]

A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic graphemes to the Latin script. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard for Sanskrit, IAST.^[78]

IAST[edit]

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the academic standard for the romanisation of Sanskrit. IAST is the de facto standard used in printed publications, like books, magazines, and electronic texts with Unicode fonts. It is based on a standard established by the Congress of Orientalists at Athens in 1912. The ISO 15919 standard of 2001 codified the transliteration convention to include an expanded standard for sister scripts of Devanagari.^[78]

The National Library at Kolkata romanisation, intended for the romanisation of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.

Harvard-Kyoto[edit]

Compared to IAST, Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic marks that IAST contains. It was designed to simplify the task of putting large amount of Sanskrit textual material into machine readable form, and the inventors stated that it reduces the effort needed in transliteration of Sanskrit texts on the keyboard.^[79] This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.

ITRANS[edit]

ITRANS is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanagari into ASCII that is widely used on Usenet. It is an extension of the Harvard-Kyoto scheme. In ITRANS, the word devanāgarī is written 'devanaagarii' or 'devanAgarI'. ITRANS is associated with an application of the same name that enables typesetting in Indic scripts. The user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS pre-processor translates the Roman letters into Devanagari (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July, 2001. It is similar to Velthius system and was created by Avinash Chopde to help print various Indic scripts with personal computers.^[79]

Velthuis[edit]

The disadvantage of the above ASCII schemes is case-sensitivity, implying that transliterated names may not be capitalised. This difficulty is avoided with the system developed in 1996 by Frans Velthuis for TeX, loosely based on IAST, in which case is irrelevant.

ALA-LC Romanisation[edit]

ALA-LC^[80] romanisation is a transliteration scheme approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, and widely used in North American libraries. Transliteration tables are based on languages, so there is a table for Hindi,^[81] one for Sanskrit and Prakrit,^[82] etc.

WX[edit]

WX is a Roman transliteration scheme for Indian languages, widely used among the natural language processing community in India. It originated at IIT Kanpur for computational processing of Indian languages. The salient features of this transliteration scheme are as follows.

• Every consonant and every vowel has a single mapping into Roman. Hence it is a prefix code, advantageous from computation point of view.
• Lower-case letters are used for unaspirated consonants and short vowels, while capital letters are used for aspirated consonants and long vowels. While the retroflex stops are mapped to 't, T, d, D, N', the dentals are mapped to 'w, W, x, X, n'. Hence the name 'WX', a reminder of this idiosyncratic mapping.

Encodings[edit]

ISCII[edit]

ISCII is an 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain ASCII, the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific.

It has been designed for representing not only Devanagari but also various other Indic scripts as well as a Latin-based script with diacritic marks used for transliteration of the Indic scripts.

ISCII has largely been superseded by Unicode, which has, however, attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.

Unicode[edit]

The Unicode Standard defines three blocks for Devanagari: Devanagari (U+0900–U+097F), Devanagari Extended (U+A8E0–U+A8FF), and Vedic Extensions (U+1CD0–U+1CFF).

Devanagari keyboard layouts[edit]

InScript layout[edit]

InScript is the standard keyboard layout for Devanagari as standardized by the Government of India. It is inbuilt in all modern major operating systems. Microsoft Windows supports the InScript layout (using the Mangal font), which can be used to input unicode Devanagari characters. InScript is also available in some touchscreen mobile phones.

Typewriter[edit]

This layout was used on manual typewriters when computers were not available or were uncommon. For backward compatibility some typing tools like Indic IME still provide this layout.

Phonetic[edit]

Such tools work on phonetic transliteration. The user writes in Roman and the IME automatically converts it into Devanagari. Some popular phonetic typing tools are Akruti, Baraha IME and Google IME.

The Mac OS X operating system includes two different keyboard layouts for Devanagari: one is much like INSCRIPT/KDE Linux, the other is a phonetic layout called 'Devanagari QWERTY'.

Any one of Unicode fonts input system is fine for Indic language Wikipedia and other wikiprojects, including Hindi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, Nepali Wikipedia. Some people use inscript. Majority uses either Google phonetic transliteration or input facility Universal Language Selector provided on Wikipedia. On Indic language wikiprojects Phonetic facility provided initially was java-based later supported by Narayam extension for phonetic input facility. Currently Indic language Wiki projects are supported by Universal Language Selector (ULS), that offers both phonetic keyboard (Aksharantaran, Marathi: अक्षरांतरण, Hindi: लिप्यंतरण, बोलनागरी) and InScript keyboard (Marathi: मराठी लिपी).

The Ubuntu Linux operating system supports several keyboard layouts for Devanagari, including Harvard-Kyoto, WX notation, Bolanagari and phonetic. The 'remington' typing method in Ubuntu IBUS is similar to the Krutidev typing method, popular in Rajasthan. The 'itrans' method is useful for those who know English well (and the English keyboard) but not familiar with typing in Devanagari.

See also[edit]

• Shiksha – the Vedic study of sound, focusing on the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet

References[edit]

Footnotes

1. ^ ^abcdGazetteer of the Bombay Presidency at Google Books, Rudradaman’s inscription from 1st through 4th century CE found in Gujarat, India, Stanford University Archives, pages 30–45, particularly Devanagari inscription on Jayadaman's coins pages 33–34
2. ^ ^abIsaac Taylor (1883), History of the Alphabet: Aryan Alphabets, Part 2, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, p. 333, ISBN978-0-7661-5847-4, .. In the Kutila this develops into a short horizontal bar, which, in the Devanagari, becomes a continuous horizontal line .. three cardinal inscriptions of this epoch, namely, the Kutila or Bareli inscription of 992, the Chalukya or Kistna inscription of 945, and a Kawi inscription of 919 .. the Kutila inscription is of great importance in Indian epigraphy, not only from its precise date, but from its offering a definite early form of the standard Indian alphabet, the Devanagari ..
3. ^Salomon, Richard (1998). Indian epigraphy: a guide to the study of inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan languages. South Asia research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 39–41. ISBN978-0-19-509984-3.
4. ^ ^abcdKathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN978-1615301492, page 83
5. ^ ^abcDanesh Jain; George Cardona (26 July 2007). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 115. ISBN978-1-135-79710-2. Nagari has a strong preference for symmetrical shapes, especially squared outlines and right angles [7 lines above the character grid]
6. ^ ^abcRichard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0195356663, pages 40–42
7. ^David Templin. 'Devanagari script'. omniglot.com. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
8. ^ ^abcdDevanagari (Nagari), Script Features and Description, SIL International (2013), United States
9. ^ ^abcGeorge Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, ISBN978-0415772945, pages 75–77
10. ^Akira Nakanishi, Writing systems of the World, ISBN978-0804816540, page 48
11. ^Hindi, Omniglot Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
12. ^George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, ISBN978-0415772945, page 75
13. ^Reinhold Grünendahl (2001), South Indian Scripts in Sanskrit Manuscripts and Prints, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, ISBN978-3447045049, pages xxii, 201–210
14. ^Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary” Etymologically and Philologically Arranged to cognate Indo-European Languages, Motilal Banarsidass, page 492
15. ^George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, ISBN978-0415772945, pages 68–69
16. ^ ^abcdSteven Roger Fischer (2004), A history of writing, Reaktion Books, ISBN978-1-86189-167-9, (p. 110) '.. an early branch of this, as of the fourth century CE, was the Gupta script, Brahmi's first main daughter. [..] The Gupta alphabet became the ancestor of most Indic scripts (usually through later Devanagari). [..] Beginning around AD 600, Gupta inspired the important Nagari, Sarada, Tibetan and Pali scripts. Nagari, of India's northwest, first appeared around AD 633. Once fully developed in the eleventh century, Nagari had become Devanagari, or 'heavenly Nagari', since it was now the main vehicle, out of several, for Sanskrit literature.'
17. ^Krishna Chandra Sagar (1993), Foreign Influence on Ancient India, South Asia Books, ISBN978-8172110284, page 137
18. ^Richard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0195356663, page 71
19. ^Michael Willis (2001), Inscriptions from Udayagiri: locating domains of devotion, patronage and power in the eleventh century, South Asian Studies, 17(1), pages 41–53
20. ^Brick with Sanskrit inscription in Nagari script, 1217 CE, found in Uttar Pradesh, India (British Museum)
21. ^Wayan Ardika (2009), Form, Macht, Differenz: Motive und Felder ethnologischen Forschens (Editors: Elfriede Hermann et al.), Universitätsverlag Göttingen, ISBN978-3940344809, pages 251–252; Quote: 'Nagari script and Sanskrit language in the inscription at Blangjong suggests that Indian culture was already influencing Bali (Indonesia) by the 10th century CE.'
22. ^William Woodville Rockhill, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, p. 671, at Google Books, United States National Museum, page 671
23. ^David Quinter (2015), From Outcasts to Emperors: Shingon Ritsu and the Mañjuśrī Cult in Medieval Japan, Brill, ISBN978-9004293397, pages 63–65 with discussion on Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra
24. ^Richard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0195356663, pages 157–160
25. ^Michael Witzel (2006), in Between the Empires : Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE (Editor: Patrick Olivelle), Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0195305326, pages 477–480 with footnote 60;
    Original manuscript, dates in Saka Samvat, and uncertainties associated with it: Mahabhasya of Patanjali, F Kielhorn
26. ^Monier Williams Online Dictionary, nagara, Cologne Sanskrit Digital Lexicon, Germany
27. ^Avenir S. Teselkin (1972). Old Javanese (Kawi). Cornell University Press. pp. 9–14.
28. ^J. G. de Casparis (1975). Indonesian Palaeography: A History of Writing in Indonesia from the Beginnings to c. AD 1500. BRILL Academic. pp. 35–43. ISBN90-04-04172-9.
29. ^Mary S. Zurbuchen (1976). Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature: A Kawi Prose Anthology. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan. pp. xi–xii. ISBN978-0-89148-053-2.
30. ^Briggs, Lawrence Palmer (1950). 'The Origin of the Sailendra Dynasty: Present Status of the Question'. Journal of the American Oriental Society. JSTOR. 70 (2): 79–81. doi:10.2307/595536. ISSN0003-0279.
31. ^John Norman Miksic; Goh Geok Yian (2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 177–179, 314–322. ISBN978-1-317-27904-4.
32. ^Salomon (2003:71)
33. ^ ^abSalomon (2003:75)
34. ^Wikner (1996:13, 14)
35. ^Wikner (1996:6)
36. ^Snell (2000:44–45)
37. ^Snell (2000:64)
38. ^Snell (2000:45)
39. ^Snell (2000:46)
40. ^Salomon (2003:77)
41. ^Verma (2003:501)
42. ^'Hindi Translation of 'dollar' Collins English-Hindi Dictionary'. www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
43. ^Wikner (1996:73)
44. ^Stella Sandahl (2000). A Hindi reference grammar. Peeters. pp. 1–4. ISBN978-9042908802.
45. ^Tej K. Bhatia (1987). A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition. BRILL Academic. pp. 51–63, 77–94. ISBN90-04-07924-6.
46. ^Masica (1991:97)
47. ^ ^abJanet Pierrehumbert, Rami Nair, Volume Editor: Bernard Laks, Implications of Hindi Prosodic Structure (Current Trends in Phonology: Models and Methods), European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford Press, 1996, ISBN978-1-901471-02-1, .. showed extremely regular patterns. As is not uncommon in a study of subphonemic detail, the objective data patterned much more cleanly than intuitive judgments .. [w] occurs when /व/ is in onglide position .. [v] occurs otherwise ..CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
48. ^Difference between ISO 15919 & IAST
49. ^Saloman, Richard (2007) “Typological Observations on the Indic Scripts” in The Indic Scripts: Paleographic and Linguistic Perspecticves D.K. Printworld Ltd., New Delhi. ISBN812460406-1. p. 33.
50. ^'The Unicode Standard, chapter 9, South Asian Scripts I'(PDF). The Unicode Standard, v. 6.0. Unicode, Inc. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
51. ^Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0, Volume 1, ISBN978-0201616330, Addison-Wesley, pages 221–223
52. ^Transliteration from Hindi Script to Meetei Mayek Watham and Vimal (2013), IJETR, page 550
53. ^Michael Shapiro (2014), The Devanagari Writing System in A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN978-8120805088, page 26
54. ^Śiṣyalekha (MS Add.1161), University of Cambridge Digital Libraries
55. ^Salotgi Inscription, The Indian Antiquary: A Journal of Oriental Research, S.P. Pandit (1872), pp.205–211; Quote: 'The inscription of which a translation is given below, is engraved on a stone pillar about 4 feet 10 inches in height, 1 foot 2 inches thick, and 1 foot 9 inches broad. It is cut in Devanagari characters on three of its four sides, and [..]'
56. ^(Bahri 2004, p. (xiii))^{[full citation needed]}
57. ^Akshar Unicode South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
58. ^Annapurna SIL Unicode, SIL International (2013)
59. ^Arial Unicode South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
60. ^ ^abCDAC-GIST Surekh Unicode South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
61. ^CDAC-GIST Yogesh South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
62. ^ ^abcdSanskrit Devanagari Fonts Harvard University (2010); see Chanda and Uttara ttf 2010 archive (Accessed: July 8, 2015)
63. ^Gargi South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
64. ^Gurumaa Unicode – a sans font KDE (2012)
65. ^Jaipur South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
66. ^Jana South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
67. ^Kalimati South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
68. ^Kanjirowa South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
69. ^Mangal South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
70. ^Raghu South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
71. ^Sanskrit Ashram South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
72. ^Thyaka South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
73. ^Devanagari fontArchived 2 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine Unicode Standard 8.0 (2015)
74. ^Daya Nand Sharma, Transliteration into Roman and Devanagari of the languages of the Indian group, Survey of India, 1972, .. With the passage of time there has emerged a practically uniform system of transliteration of Devanagari and allied alphabets. Nevertheless, no single system of Romanisation has yet developed ..
75. ^United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Technical reference manual for the standardisation of geographical names, United Nations Publications, 2007, ISBN978-92-1-161500-5, .. ISO 15919 .. There is no evidence of the use of the system either in India or in international cartographic products .. The Hunterian system is the actually used national system of romanisation in India ..
76. ^United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Far East, Volume 2, United Nations, 1955, .. In India the Hunterian system is used, whereby every sound in the local language is uniformly represented by a certain letter in the Roman alphabet ..
77. ^National Library (India), Indian scientific & technical publications, exhibition 1960: a bibliography, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, Government of India, 1960, .. The Hunterian system of transliteration, which has international acceptance, has been used ..
78. ^ ^abDevanagari IAST conventions Script Source (2009), SIL International, United States
79. ^ ^abTransliteration of Devanāgarī D. Wujastyk (1996)
80. ^'LOC.gov'. LOC.gov. Retrieved 13 June 2011.
81. ^'0001.eps'(PDF). Retrieved 13 June 2011.
82. ^'LOC.gov'(PDF). Retrieved 13 June 2011.

Sources

• Masica, Colin (1991), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN978-0-521-29944-2.
• Snell, Rupert (2000), Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN978-0-07-141984-0.
• Salomon, Richard (2003), 'Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages', in Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 67–103, ISBN978-0-415-77294-5.
• Verma, Sheela (2003), 'Magahi', in Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, pp. 498–514, ISBN978-0-415-77294-5.
• Wikner, Charles (1996), A Practical Sanskrit Introductory.

Census and catalogues of manuscripts in Devanagari[edit]

Thousands of manuscripts of ancient and medieval era Sanskrit texts in Devanagari have been discovered since the 19th century. Major catalogues and census include:

• A Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Private Libraries at Google Books, Medical Hall Press, Princeton University Archive
• A Descriptive Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts at Google Books, Vol 1: Upanishads, Friedrich Otto Schrader (Compiler), University of Michigan Library Archives
• A preliminary list of the Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts, Vedas, Sastras, Sutras, Schools of Hindu Philosophies, Arts, Design, Music and other fields, Friedrich Otto Schrader (Compiler), (Devanagiri manuscripts are identified by Character code De.)
• Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts, Part 1: Vedic Manuscripts, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
• Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts, Part 4: Manuscripts of Hindu schools of Philosophy and Tantra, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
• Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts, Part 5: Manuscripts of Medicine, Astronomy and Mathematics, Architecture and Technical Science Literature, Julius Eggeling (Compiler), Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
• Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts at Google Books, Part 6: Poetic, Epic and Purana Literature, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
• David Pingree (1970–1981), Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit: Volumes 1 through 5, American Philosophical Society, Manuscripts in various Indic scripts including Devanagari

External links[edit]

• Digital Nagari fonts, University of Chicago
• Devanagari in different fonts, Wazu, Japan (Alternate collection: Luc Devroye's comprehensive Indic Fonts, McGill University)
• Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, p. 30, at Google Books, Rudradaman’s inscription in Sanskrit Nagari script from 1st through 4th century CE (coins and epigraphy), found in Gujarat, India, pages 30–45
• Numerals and Text in Devanagari, 9th century temple in Gwalior Madhya Pradesh, India, Current Science
• Maurer, Walter H. (1976). 'On the Name Devanāgarī'. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 96 (1): 101–104. doi:10.2307/599893. JSTOR599893.