> I don't know if it would make sense to allow Pali instead of Velthius . .
> .

It is confusing to talk about a Pali font as there is really no such thing.
You are really talking about fonts which include a range of diacritics for
transcribing Indic languages. Some fonts have a huge range of diacritics
for transcribing many different languages while some are trimmed down for
Pali and Sanskrit. Whatever works for Sanskrit will, of necessity, also
work for Pali. To use diacritic fonts, the group needs to be set to use
Unicode utf-8 fonts. This is something the group owner can arrange if they
want, but I think he may have reasons for not doing this as this discussion
comes up every year or so here.

> The 'Gentium Basic' font with the needed Pali characters . . .

The SIL Gentium is a good font for Indic languages (and others) and is
widely used in the Buddhist academic world ~ I use it myself as the need
arises. However, it is rather ironic to use this font for Buddhist studies.
Do you know who SIL are and what their aim is ? They are a Christian
evangelical organization who have developed a range of language tools for
language study for the sole purpose of translating the Bible into every
language so they can disrupt indigenous cultures with their Christian
"message" ! Not exactly benign. As an alternative, there is the Gandhari
font which was developed by Buddhist scholars for specifically Buddhist
language needs.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge