Does anybody speak Nepali?
I have a couple of questions about the script, which is also shared with Hindi and some other languages.
1) Is it possible to type the "half-characters", i.e. the short forms without the vertical strokes, as standalone characters on a computer?
If I look at the pictures on this website, it looks more like the guy cut half of them with a picture editor:
https://nepalgo.de/post/48993924557/the-consonant
I can't tell from their appearance in my paper book either.
I am also interested to know if it is possible to render the vowel diacritics only as characters that can be typed on a computer, but I am more inclined to believe it isn't.
2) How does an Android keyboard layout for Devanagari / Nepali work?
Feel free to skip that question since I think it will be easy to figure out, but I will write my observations.
Under Nepali language I have two options one called "Devanagari," the other "Nepali" and the former is selected by default. So I put the "Devanagari" layout on my phone.
There is one line with ten vowels at the top and are buttons which can add the dots for the अं and अ: for nepali and some other diacritics for other languages. The consonants are under it in two sets and in the first one, there is a button to the right which says "क्षत्रज्ञ" and when you press it, at its place comes another called "कखग" which takes you back. I guess the first page has most simple consonants and the second - the remaining ones and compounds?
Is there anything else I haven't yet figured out? I don't know the letters yet, but I got quickly over the vowels and learnt a couple of the consonants too.
3) The most complicated thing seems to be the ligatures (e.g. two क's on top of each other.)
Is it that some of those are common and other not that much? And does it vary from language to language?
For example, I wasn't able to find two क's on top of each other anywhere on the Internet, even though to me this is one of the prettiest ones. Not even in the dedicated Wikipedia page about Devanagari ligatures as a typed character, only as a picture.
Or maybe I didn't know how to search?
Does anyone have observations which ligatures are used especially in Nepali and Hindi but also in other languages, and by what proportion of speakers?
Are all ligatures possible to type on a computer as standalone characters included in UniCode or only some of them and then the rest is considered separate letters and it's up to the font how it's going to visualise it? Indeed, I have never looked into a writing system where the letter shapes change according to their position in the words, so I don't know how these things work.
And one more thing about ligatures - if you use them, do you have to do it consistently with all of them in all words or can you select some ligatures you like and others not?
4) It seems like some characters always take part of the vertical stroke away (अ), while some can either do or not depending on the person writing (थ); also that all characters need to be attached to the line at the top, but with some one can choose from which side to do it - left or right (छ). Are these observations correct?
I wrote another question about the intercompatibility of different abugidas in the South-Asian languages sub-forum.