[XeTeX] Combining consonant with elongated r vowel (ऋ) in Devanagari using Mac

[Ravi Parimi]

> On 13 Sep 2009, at 05:33, Ravi Parimi wrote:
>
>> Hello ,
>>
>> I am trying to join the consonant त with the vowel ऋ on my Mac running
>> 10.5.6 but cannot find the right combination of keystrokes to get the
>> desired conjunct form. Combining त and the shorter vowel ृ works as
>> expected resulting in तृ
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "join the consonant त with the vowel ऋ" ...
> isn't that exactly what तृ is? The character U+0908 ऋ is DEVANAGARI LETTER
> VOCALIC R, in its full (syllable-initial) form; U+0943 ृ is DEVANAGARI VOWEL
> SIGN VOCALIC R, which is the combining form use on a consonant (such as त).
> What other kind of "joining" are you trying to achieve?
>
> If you're actually looking for तॄ, that would be the consonant त combined
> with U+0960 ॠ. AFAICT, neither the full vowel letter U+0960 nor the matra
> form U+0944 are supported on the Mac Devanagari QWERTY keyboard, so you'd
> have
> to use the character palette or Hex Input layout to enter them, or create a
> customized keyboard with a tool such as Ukelele to type them more
> conveniently.

Jonathan,

Thanks very much for your prompt response.

I was indeed looking to type तॄ using qwerty keys but didn't know how
to. I find that the qwerty keyboard provided by mac is limited in many
ways (e.g unable to type conjunct consonants, all combinations of
consonants+vowels not available etc.). I'd like to use xelatex for
creating my document, but am stifled by the set of characters that are
present in Mac. Do you have any other suggestions?


Thanks,
Ravi