EDIT Devanāgarī is written from left to right and doesn’t discern between uppercase and lowercase. In classic sanskrit, no linebreak after words existed so that an unbroken upper bar was the result. If a break existed it indicated breath groups. Today, word breaks are used though.

Devanāgarī is an alphabet of the abugida kind which means that each consonant has an inherent vowel (a) that\'s only changed when the consonant is modified with the different vowel signs. When the consonants are to be joined directly the vowels can be suppressed. The written form is then a ligature where the attached consonants loose their top bar and get attached directly to the main consonant.

Devanagari has 34 consonants (vyanjana), and 12 vowels (svara). A syllable (akshara) is formed by the combination of zero or one consonants and one vowel.

 jsw  : :  pfelecan 

EDIT History
Devanāgarī derives from the Gupta script which ultimately derives from the Brāhmī script that has been known since the 3rd century BC. Around 800 AD, the Nāgarī script evoved out of avariant of the Gupta script and around 1200, Devanāgarī evolved out of a similar variant of Gupta.

 jsw 

EDIT Etymology
The name Devanāgarī derives from the Sanskrit words »Deva« (divine) and »Nāgarī« (urban), forming a compound saying »divine, urban script« and ultimately meaning »excellent or perfected form of the Nāgarī script«.

 jsw 

EDIT Languages Devanāgarī is used to write several South Asian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Pali, Nepal Bhasa and Nepali.

 jsw  Eukesh 

EDIT ITRANS (»Indian languages TRANSliteration«) is a lossless ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts, particularly for Devanāgarī (and used for the Sanskrit, Hindi, Nepali, Marathi and other languages). In ITRANS, the word Devanagari is written as »devanaagarii«. It was developed by Avinash Chopde.

 jsw 

EDIT The speciality about devanāgarī script is that it is spoken as it is written. This makes it suitable of text to speech conversion and vice-versa.

 alind  : : :  pfelecan 

EDIT KIRAN FONTS
Kiran fonts are true type fonts that are still in use to write Devanagari script based on ASCII character set. It uses clever phonetic usage of English keyboard and entire devanagari script with combination characters can be correctly expressed. It is developed by Kiran Bhave.

Main advantage of this font is that it does not restrict you in typing any combination, so you can express the writing the way the composer wants it giving many alternative options to write the same character combinations.

It is FREE for any users and available at Ref: http://www.kiranfont.com

 kiranbhave  kiranbhave