From: rama@cimbria.cs.rice.edu (Ramarao Kanneganti)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian.telugu
Subject: Re: Hang on, for rit! [Re: my transliteration scheme...]
Date: 16 Oct 92 17:54:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: rice.Bw872u.3G0
Organization: Rice University, Houston

Friends, Telugu's and fellow nettors!!

This is an article about how we have developed rts. This should remove
lots of confusions. 

Way back before BC, Kishore was editing a magazine in Telugu in
Houston. He was forced to write all the articles and however good his
hand writing is, it didn't have the professional look. 

At that time, he got a set of Mac fonts developed by Dr. Hardt of UCB.
We typeset few issues of the magazine with that. The major problem was
each key is assigned one key stroke. So, for guNintham to "k" you have
to press "ki" and for "j" you have to press "j<ALT> i" (something like
that). Since the positions of these "additions" depend on the
consonant, the combinations were mind boggling. Even our star typist
[that was Kishore], could not type more than 5 words for minute. 

Then, my brother Kanneganti Chandra Sekhara Rao, who was well versed
with Macs, kishore and I designed a software on Unix that would let us
use a sophisticated transilteration and convert a file into another
file that can be read by Mac. So when you transfer this file and read
in Word as a text file and convert the font to Telugu, we could see
the Telugu alphabet.

However, the alphabet also was limited. We could not use several
punctuation marks and English in it. So, we designed our own Mac
alphabet so that one can live in only one font and edit a complete
magazine issue.

The problem was we have two systems. The software to input is on Unix
and the software to use the fonts is on Mac. We thought of developing
the software on Mac, but our other commitments did not allow us to do
so.

At that point, we started developing Metafont based Telugu characters.
The Mukkavillis beat us to it. They have a comprehensive set of fonts
and macros to use in LaTeX.

Even so, we felt that our input scheme is superior. It is more
flexible and extensible. So, we decided to stick to our
transilteration scheme and design a system on top of LaTeX using the
Mukkivilli fonts.

When we are doing it, we started experimenting with several options.
To keep the program very flexible, we decided to write in Shell. After
couple of iterations, after whatever we can learn about the needs of
people, we will convert into C++ so that it will be portable and all
that jazz.

So currently the idea is:

If you write your articles in a standard [flexible, and extensible]
scheme, we can provide the software to view it, print it and frame it!

Almost all the people agree on an intuitive scheme. Only trouble is
with the elongation: We decided that adding a ' at the end of vowel is
an elongation. And, "aa" is elongation to "a". Similarly, rest of the
stuff. 

Another sticky point is: ta, tha: We don't have a winner here. Kishore
and I differed and performed extensive analysis [the first we know of
any analysis of alphabet in Telugu language] on this issue. We did not
reach a consensus, but nevertheless we are sticking to this:

t -- is as in taata. seeta. 
T or t' -- is kiTiki [window]
d -- meeda kinda
D or d' -- vaaDu

As usual "h" provides the asphiration.

Notice that ' proves the elongation for vowels and retroflexion for
consonants. 

All we ask is stick to this format and we will deliver the goods!!

Thank you for your support.
Rama

PS: In the process of writing, we have accumulated several heuristics
for Telugu spell checking. It is not inconceivable that one day you
will skip all those "'" s and still get the right form. But, till
then we ask you to be more specific in your transilteration.

PPS: I am reposting the Table RTS:
_____________________________________________________________________


    a    aa=aaa=a'    i    ee=ii=ia=i'    u    oo=uu=U=ua=u'

    R    Ru    e     ea=ae=E=e'    ai   o    oe=O=oa=o'    au=ou



    k         kh=K=Kh        g        gh=G=Gh      ~m

    c=ch      C=Ch           j        jh=J=Jh      ~n

    T=t'      Th=th'         D=d'     Dh=dh'       N=nh=n'

    t         th             d        dh           n

    p         f=P=ph=Ph      b        bh=B=Bh      m



    y   r   l   v=w   S=s'   sh   s   h   L=lh=Lh=l'  x=ksh   ~r


Throughout, h  = H.
alu (archaic)  = ~l
arasunna = @M
visarga  = @h
avagraha (used in Sanskrit) = @2
na pollu (arachaic) = @n
null operation = _  (underscore) (see below)

Syllable break = ^  (see below)
Force combination = & (see below)
For "sunnaa", see below.

tcha (allophone of c, now extinct) = ~c
tja  (allophone of j, now extnict) = ~j

aloo (archaic) = ~L