I came across an great Sanskrit (Devanagari) font which works quite intuitively. You can download it from here:
http://www.kofibusia.com/level_1/GetFonts.html
I was just playing around with it in OpenOffice and noticed that the keys are quite intuitive. For example the “k” key gives me “ka” in Devanagari and if I type “shift-k” then I get the shortened “k” as in consonant combinations. A “k shift-u” gives me a ku (with long u) in Devanagari. All the keys seem quite intuitive in this way.
All makes sense really.