Aksharapad (अक्षरपद)

A personal Devanagari input method (IME): type Sanskrit in IAST, Harvard-Kyoto, ITRANS, or Velthuis and get live, space-triggered conversion to Devanagari — powered by the real Aksharamukha transliteration engine, running entirely in the browser (or natively on macOS). Nothing typed here ever leaves the device.

Akṣarapada (अक्षरपद, from akṣara "syllable/letter" + pada "word/foot") — a keyboard, in Sanskrit's own words. Sibling project to Lipyantara.

🔗 Live site → 🔗 Open the composer → 💾 Download for macOS →

Three ways to use it

1. Web — the full site at the live link above, composer embedded in the hero.
2. Installed web app (iPhone/iPad/Android) — open the composer, then Share → Add to Home Screen in Safari. Offline-capable after first load.
3. Native macOS app — a real .app/.dmg, built with deno desktop. See Building the macOS app below.

Features

• Four keyboard schemes: IAST, Harvard-Kyoto, ITRANS, and Velthuis — switch anytime, mid-sentence
• Space (or Enter) triggers conversion — type a word, hit space, it becomes Devanagari immediately
• Insert special characters: the complete Unicode Vedic Extensions block (U+A8E0–U+A8FD, U+1CD0–U+1CF9) — svara/accent marks, anusvara variants, avagraha, and more, each labeled with its Unicode name
• Copy and clear controls on the composer
• Light / dark / system theme switcher
• Installable as a PWA on iOS/Android, or as a native app on macOS

How it works

The engine is the actual Aksharamukha Python package by Vinodh Rajan, compiled to WebAssembly via Pyodide and wrapped for browser use by Aksharamukha.js, loaded once from a CDN (~17 MB) and cached afterward.

The IME behavior itself — buffering what you type and converting on space — is not a special engine feature; Aksharamukha's own web IME implements this as frontend logic on top of the same conversion call. This project does the same: ime.js tracks the "current word" back to the last space/newline, calls engine.processAsync(scheme, 'Devanagari', word) on that word when you press space or Enter, and splices the Devanagari result back into the textarea.

Why no "Akshara" scheme

Aksharamukha's own web IME offers a fifth scheme, "Akshara" (internally RomanReadable) — a readable ASCII convention (double letters for long vowels, e.g. akṣarā → AKSHARAA). It's not included here: testing showed engine.processAsync('RomanReadable', 'Devanagari', 'uu') returns उउ instead of ऊ — the reverse direction (Devanagari → RomanReadable) works correctly, suggesting the scheme's forward (input) conversion has a real bug in the current engine build, independent of anything in this project's own code. IAST, Harvard-Kyoto, ITRANS, and Velthuis were all verified correct in both directions and are the four schemes offered here.

Project structure

site/                    deployed to GitHub Pages
├── index.html            marketing page, composer embedded via iframe
├── app.html               the composer — also the PWA start_url
├── ime.js                  shared IME logic (identical to app/ime.js)
├── manifest.json           PWA manifest
├── sw.js                    service worker (offline caching)
├── icons/                    PWA / favicon icons

app/                      native macOS app source (deno desktop)
├── index.html             same composer UI as site/app.html
├── ime.js                  identical to site/ime.js
├── main.ts                  deno desktop entrypoint
├── deno.json                 app name, bundle identifier, icon config
└── icons/
    └── app.icns             macOS app icon

site/{app.html,ime.js} and app/{index.html,ime.js} are intentionally near-duplicates — kept in sync by hand when making UI/logic changes, exactly like Lipyantara.

Running locally

Web:

cd site
python3 -m http.server 8000

Native app (dev mode with hot reload):

cd app
deno desktop --hmr --include index.html --include ime.js --include fonts --icon icons/app.icns --allow-read=. main.ts

Building the macOS app

cd app
deno desktop --include index.html --include ime.js --include fonts --icon icons/app.icns --allow-read=. \
  --output Aksharapad.dmg main.ts

Built .app/.dmg files are not committed to this repository — they're distributed as GitHub Release assets, named Aksharapad.dmg so the download links keep working.

deno desktop is experimental as of Deno 2.9 — expect some rough edges.

Deployment

The web site (site/) deploys via GitHub Pages through .github/workflows/deploy-pages.yml. Set Settings → Pages → Source to GitHub Actions.

Credits & license

This repository's own code is licensed under the MIT License.

The transliteration engine — Aksharamukha by Vinodh Rajan — is licensed under GNU AGPL 3.0 and used here unmodified, loaded at runtime. See NOTICE.md for full third-party attribution.

The browser port, Aksharamukha.js, is by Param.