Let’s Start A Revolution!“From today, let’s all type all our emails with correct

spellings, using diacritics.”

Spread it like a virus!! Here’s how

Dear friends and fans/lovers of Vedic culture & Sanskṛt,

I am thrilled by this - now ANYONE can EASILY start typing in Romanized Sanskṛt..this Unicode thing is a major breakthrough! As HG Pratyatoṣa Prabhu announced on his site in 2007:

BREAKTHROUGH! Sanskrit diacritics with no special font required! The http :// pratyatosa . com /691226 IN . BOS . html web page, as does this one ( http :// www . pratyatosa . com / SanskritDiacriticTextConversion . htm # FD 4 ), uses the Segoe UI font with the Tahoma Plus and Tahoma fonts as a backups just in case you don't have Segoe UI installed.

What i’ve understood of ‘unicode’ is that each unicode font set contains all alphabets of all languages in the world.. and nowadays all computers have it, thus the interenet like vedabase . net can show diacritcis accurately without the need to install a font..

As HG Pratyatoṣa prabhu mentions on his above site:

If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7 or have Microsoft Word 2007 installed, then you already have Segoe UI installed. … The newer versions (dated 7/17/2004 or later) of the Tahoma font and the Microsoft Sans Serif font both display 30 out of the 31 standard { IAST ( http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / IAST } Sanskṛt diacritic characters correctly on most Windows XP / Vista computers. Using Windows 7, these same 3 fonts each display all 31 characters correctly. In fact,

Windows 7 adds 6 other fonts which also display all 31 characters correctly, namely Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Segoe UI Light, Segoe UI Semibold and Times New Roman!

So nowadays, romanized Sanskṛt displays correctly easily within Gmail, Facebook and Microsoft Word... almost anywhere!

And here’s the best part that can make the revolution actually happen easily: The software that makes it as easy as anything could be to type with unicode - the new DiacWin unicode keyboard filter.... Can you imagine how easy it is? To type this: ‘Ā’, all i had to just do is type ; followed by A. And if i want ‘Ṣ’ then type ; followed by S! Read on to find out just how easy it is to join the revolution!

Please follow these few simple steps, then you can start practising your Sanskṛt (with correct spelling!!) every time you type - it is so easy.. actualy it is on the CD which I gave all participants in our Sanskṛt pronunciation course, but here goes with step by step instructions..

First, go to this wonderful page of HG Murāri Dās (Michael Best), dear son of HG Pratyatoṣa Prabhu:- http :// www . dasya . com /~ mbest / freeware / fontsunicode . html and download the diacwin unicode - save it in a folder and then double-click it to unzip and extract the files within - save those into a new folder and note the location - I suggest in your My Documents you make a folder called "Software". (It’s just a tiny utility with a size of just 5kb - it just sits as a filter between your keyboard and youc computer and works only when you trigger it with the ; key - so it won’t slow down your PC/laptop in any way)

After that, right click the little green tree icon and click Send to Desktop (Create shortcut). A new icon will appear on your desktop with the green tree logo. Drag it onto your START button and place it at the top of the Start Menu to make it easily accessible.

Next, you can visit this webpage of HG Pratyatoṣa prabhu http :// www . pratyatosa . com / SanskritDiacriticTextConversi on . htm # FD 5 and download for free more than 100 different Sanskṛt diacritic fonts.

Now to start using it!

To start, double-click the green tree shortcut which you created above**. Now you will see that a little green tree icon near your computer's clock in the bottom corner of your screen. Right click it and then click ACTIVE - until you do this it remains inactive. That’s it! Now your computer can speak (I mean type, of course) Sanskṛt!

As mentioned above, now all you need to do if you want a line above the a is to type ; followed by a - that’s all! To get an s with a dot under, type ; followed by s.

To see the full list of diacritics, right click the tree icon near yr system clock and click Help. It is very straightforward. (The only two tricky common ones you need to remember are that for ś you need to use ;c and for the ṅ as in saṅga or gaurāṅga or saṅkīrtana, you have to use ;g to get the n with superscript dot (i.e. a dot above it) The rest are quite direct.

So now you can do you little part to help make the greatest language of the world, Sanskṛt, a living language once again... just touching that semicolon key first..

[and in case you are wondering... “what if i need to type a semi-colon? have i lost it?” No problem, just type it twice! He (Michael Best)’s thought of everything, has'nt he? What a great contribution!]

So if daily we keep typing one or two words in sanskṛt, it will surely brush up our sanskṛt skills and avoid unconcious murdering of the great language by barbaric anglicised (i don't even like this word - it is full of arrogance - to think we can twist other people's names etc because our spelling is illogical!) wrong spellings.

:-) this is the start of a small revolution! let's get others using this great software since it is now possible on all new computers and the internet, and thus rectify all the wrong spellings that even our Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees regularly make! I was absolutely thrilled to discover recently that it works in Facebook as well as in Gmail!

haribol! Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa’s wonderful kali-yuga-versin of Sanskṛt kī.... jāya!

yrs in service of śrī guru, śrī gaurāṅga, śrī śrī gandharvikā-giridhārī and śrīmad bhagavad gīta,

dīnānukampana dāsa

PS**If you really wanna be sincere about always using the DiacWin Unicode utility, then all you have to do is put it in your Startup Folder, so whenever you start your computer, it will be sitting there in the corner, near your system clock, smiling at you... waiting for you to right-click and make it ACTIVE! Here’s how:-

Find that shortcut little green tree icon which we put on the desktop earlier (see above for details). Right click it and select Copy.

Now click your computer’s Start button; then click All Programs. Look for the folder named Startup. Open that. Now right-click within this folder and select Paste to paste a copy of that shortcut icon into that startup folder.

Henceforth, whenever you start your computer this little diacwin utility will be activated and you will be asked to grant permission for it to run at the time of starting up. As I said before, it will not slow down your pc at all - it is merely a keyboard filter that is activated briefly only when you use the semicolon key to trigger the diacritic - it is not a complicated/heavy software.

PS 2

In case you have any older material in Romanized Sanskṛt which uses say Tamal or Balaram Fonts - where you see Kṛṣṇa displayed as ‘Kåñëa’ (remember seeing this?) - well you can convert it wtih this wonderful utility at the top of HG Pratyatoṣa prabhu’s page: http :// www . pratyatosa . com / SanskritDiacriticTextConversi on . htm # FD 5 Just copy the Balram text (highlight and Ctrl+C) then go to that page and paste it (Ctrl+V) into the box. Click the button ‘From Balaram’. Then select a suitable Unicode Font eg. Tahoma Plus and hey presto! it’s now in unicode.. Cut and paste it anywhere and it won’t go weird!

Try it with this sample;

Hare Kåñëa Hare KåñëaKåñëa Kåñëa Hare HareHare Räma Hare RämaRäma Räma Hare Räma Hare

and you should end up with this;

Hare Krsna Hare KrsnaKrsna Krsna Hare HareHare Rāma Hare RāmaRāma Rāma Hare Rāma Hare

Haribol!

PS3And if you want to go further.... you’ll be shocked to hear this.. if you can do the above, then you can already type Sanskṛt in Devanāgarī!!!