I've hacked together a little tool to convert
between some scripts and transliterations:

http://alex.voodooglobe.com/2547/c19/

Some of the conversions require a Unicode
compliant browser such as Firefox
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ;
not, for example, IE). I have only a limited
familiarity with Thai and Devanagari, and
would like to add Sinhalese, Tibetan, and
other scripts if anyones find this useful.

> for the form of the runes was the fact that they
> should be easy to cut in wood, so they should contain
> only straight lines, and never horizontal ones, as
> those would be parallell with the wood fibres and thus
> difficult to see.

That certainly explains the 'look' of the runes.

Dimitry, I can not seem to resolve the address:
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/evolalpha.html
Do you recall the jist of the content?

Here's an example Rune chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anglosaxonrunes.JPG

A Brahmi recreation:
http://brahmi.sourceforge.net/images/brahmi.gif

(Note the "sounds" are not in the same order).

Here's an example of A'soka engraving:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Asoka1.gif

Alex