Carnatic notations

My craze for blogging about notations is not yet gone :) The last one was about western notation and a technical view of representing sheet music using DSLs. But this one 's going to be pure music.
I recently found some websites describing carnatic notation and some even having staff notes for carnatic songs. The one describing the actual notation in swaram was quite head swarming and i felt it was still inadequate to actually render that piece effectively. Carnatic music learning as opposed to western learning has always been more vocal than notations. There is so much in each line, each touch, each transition of swara that conveying through notations is quite difficult and even if conveyed would take days for a person to understand one line completely. Just taking ragams for instance. There are so many ragams that don't actually have a rigid structure ( the janya ragas) and allow accidentals here and there. Most importantly a raga is identified more through a particular feel in it changing which kills the beauty of it. By feel i mean a particular gamakam in certain swarams. A great example would be sahana. Also a lot of sangathis are quite tough reading and learning rather than listening and learning. The chances are more of getting everything wrong when using just notations. Representing all of the gamakams, the way that fits that raga makes the notation quite tough to read and interpret as such.
Notations are important though at the basic level of learning. Especially to get the hang of swaras, the spacings between them and all the various basic ragams. But after varnam notations are too complex and inadequate. Maybe this way of learning( listening and playing or singing) has actually made it more difficult for me to just read notations, map them to western scale and play :)