.TH "iast" "1" "16 April 2021" "sanskrit-iast" "Sanskrit Transliteration"

.SH NAME
.B iast
- a program for Sanskrit transliteration


.SH SYNOPSIS
.SY iast
.RB [ -f
.IR FILE ]...\&
.RI [ "TEXT ARGUMENTS" ]...
.br
.SY iast
.B -r
.RB [ -f
.IR FILE ]...\&
.RI [ "TEXT ARGUMENTS" ]...
.br
.SY iast
.B -e
.RB [ -f
.IR FILE ]...\&
.RI [ "TEXT ARGUMENTS" ]...
.YS


.SH INTRODUCTION
.B iast
is a tool for the lossless transliteration of Sanskrit texts from Devanagari
to the Latin alphabet using the
.I IAST
scheme (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration). It should be
noted that as the
.I IAST
standard does not handle the Devanagari characters with the diacritic marks
(e.g., the nukta), it cannot be used to transliterate modern Hindi texts.
Furthermore, since there are some differences between spoken and written Hindi,
support for transliteration of Hindi texts makes no sense and is therefore
not a planned feature.


.SH OPTIONS
.BR \-f
.IR FILE ,
.B \-\-file
.I FILE
.RS 4
The input file for the transliteration. A plain text file containing a
.BR UTF-8 (7)
string is expected. When the
.I FILE
is
.BR - ,
the contents of the standard input shall be read.
.RE

.BR \-r ,
.B \-\-reverse
.RS 4
Use reverse transliteration (from Latin to Devanagari).
.RE

.BR \-c ,
.B \-\-czech
.RS 4
Transcript a Devanagari text into Czech using only the characters of the Czech
alphabet (an experimental feature).
.RE

.BR \-e ,
.BR \-\-encode ,
.BR \-\-velthuis
.RS 4
Convert a plain
.BR ASCII (7)
string to the
.I IAST
representation using the
.I Velthuis
scheme.
.RE

.BR \-a ,
.B \-\-ascii
.RS 4
Output
.I Velthuis
encoding rather than
.I IAST
characters.
.RE

.BR \-h ,
.B \-\-help
.RS 4
Show the usage information and exit.
.RE

.BR \-v ,
.B \-\-version
.RS 4
Show the version number and exit.
.RE


.SH DESCRIPTION
.SS Transliteration
The program allows to perform transliteration either on all non-option
arguments or on whole files specified by the
.B -f
option. By default, the program
performs transliteration from Devanagari to a corresponding romanised version,
but using the
.B -r
switch, reverse transliteration can be performed, converting romanised texts
back into Devanagari.

Alternatively, when the flag
.B -c
is used, the input can be transcripted for usage in the Czech language,
limiting the used characters to the common characters of the Czech alphabet
and applying some phonetic changes. Note: this transformation is not
unambiguous and it is therefore not possible to recover the original Devanagari
version again.


.SS Velthuis Encoding
When the flag
.B -e
is set on, the program converts strings encoded using the
.I Velthuis
scheme (purely
.IR ASCII -encoded
strings) into the special characters
of the
.I IAST
alphabet. For example, it can convert ‘sa.msk.rtam’ to ‘saṃskṛtam’
or ‘"saastram’ to ‘śāstram’.

The encoding scheme is based on the following principle: the characters ‘.’,
‘"’ and ‘~’ are considered to be modifiers that modify the letter that stands
after the modifier. For example, if the string to be encoded contains the ‘.t’
sequence, it will be encoded as ‘ṭ’, the sequence ‘~n’ as ‘ñ’ and so on. Long
vowels are marked by doubled letter corresponding to the vowel; thus ‘aa’ will
be encoded to ‘ā’, ‘.rr’ to ‘ṝ’ and so on.


.SH SEE ALSO
.BR ascii (7),
.BR utf8 (7).


.SH FURTHER INFORMATION
More information on Devanagari and the encoding schemes can be found on
Wikipedia:

.RS 2
.I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari
- the Devanagari script,
.br
.I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAST
- the IAST scheme,
.br
.I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velthuis
- the Velthuis scheme.
.RE


.SH REPORTING BUGS
If you encounter a bug, you should make sure that you are using the latest
version of the software. If you are and the bug is still present, you can
report it on the GitLab issues tracker:
.IR https://gitlab.com/vlastavesely/sanskrit-iast/issues .


.SH LICENSE AND WARRANTY
Copyright © 2018-2021  Vlasta Vesely
.RI < vlastavesely@protonmail.ch >.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the
Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.