[Buddha-l] Sanskrit and Tibetan in LaTeX/Emacs/AucTeX on XP

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 16:11 -0400, Tom Troughton wrote:

> I am setting up a tex/latex system on windows (miktex) and wondered
> what comments people had about the various packages for the two
> languages above. What about Pali?

Do you have access to running TeX in Omega mode? If so, there are some
packages that you can use to typeset Sanskrit (or Pali) in either
romanization or devanagari. Essentially what you do is put the following
command at the top of your LaTeX file:

\usepackage{t1enc,skt-dn,skt-rm}

You can then encode Sanskrit in Unicode encoding, which enables you to
see the romanized Sanskrit on the screen with all the proper diacritical
marks. If you wish to typeset it in devanagari, just put the Sanskrit
within an environment, like this: \Nag{buddha}. You then compile the
file in Omega mode. 

> I also am having trouble running commands from emacs

The easiest way to work with TeX/LaTeX/Omega-TeX within emacs is to use
a auctex, which I assume you already have. The auctex macros give you a
special set of menus that make it very easy to compile a TeX file in any
mode, including Omega. You can also easily preview a DVI file and print
it without ever leaving emacs. 

Most of what you need to know can be found at a helpful web site set up
by Christian Coseru. He has provided links to other useful sites. Go to
http://www.anu.edu.au/asianstudies/ahcen/coseru/unicode/  

Or look for skt-rm in Google and explore a few other sites that have
good information on this.

I'll send you some a really nice set of emacs macros that emulate a
Sanskrit keyboard. It makes typing Unicode for Sanskrit easy, even a
little bit fun. 

If you can get started on your own, I can probably help you fine-tune
your set-up if you run into difficulties. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico