Digital Pali Reader (DPR) software program.

[beeblebrox]

I found a nice font... it's Vietnamese, but still displays the Pali very well. Very easy to read. The name is "Hoang Yen", you can download it here (along with a few different fonts). There is another set here, it's very basic (Times Roman and Arial), but still pretty good.

They seem to show up only in Firefox, not Google Chrome. Chrome apparently doesn't let you change the fonts, even though it has that option in the menu.

I'm curious which fonts do you guys use? One thing that bugs me is how in some fonts, certain letters are bigger than others. These fonts don't have that problem.

[David N. Snyder]

I was copying and pasting for the longest time, until fortunately some here pointed out how the 'pasting' was changing the diacritics to something else completely wrong.

Then I downloaded Pali unicode. Now I have another desktop so I need to download it again to my new computer.

[beeblebrox]

Hoang Yen is a fancy font, by the way. I wouldn't use it for the forums. It makes DPR very nice to use, and also makes the Pali much easier for me to read, for some reason.

I went ahead and googled for "Pali unicode", and found this - "Times Extended Roman". It seems better than the one I gave above (VU Times). It's more consistent. I'm using it for the forums right now, and everything seems good. I tried it in DPR, I still prefer Hoang Yen.

[yuttadhammo]

I found a nice font... it's Vietnamese, but still displays the Pali very well. Very easy to read. The name is "Hoang Yen", you can download it here (along with a few different fonts). There is another set here, it's very basic (Times Roman and Arial), but still pretty good.

They seem to show up only in Firefox, not Google Chrome. Chrome apparently doesn't let you change the fonts, even though it has that option in the menu.

I'm curious which fonts do you guys use? One thing that bugs me is how in some fonts, certain letters are bigger than others. These fonts don't have that problem.

I use Linux, which is entirely Unicode by default... I guess Windows users have a problem with the DPR if they can't display Unicode characters - too bad, really...

[beeblebrox]

I use Linux, which is entirely Unicode by default... I guess Windows users have a problem with the DPR if they can't display Unicode characters - too bad, really...

Hello Bhante,

I just found "Arial Unicode MS" on my computer. It was right under my nose the whole time.

There are several different Arial fonts, but only this one is good for Pāli. The on-screen readability is excellent... there are no variations with the letters. I think it's included on Windows XP and up. Anyone using Firefox, just set it as the default font, under Tools menu, Options, and Contents.

Anyone who's technically inclined... in the Unicode fonts, seems like you need the characters in these blocks - "Latin-1 Supplement" (for the ñ and macrons) and "Latin Extended Additional" (for ṃ, ṅ, and other letters with dots). Most of the fonts seem to have the former, but very few have the latter.

Many of them don't look that great on-screen (jaggy, and odd shapes), but they probably look good when printed. When I get my printer working again, I'm going to experiment with this. I think the DPR will be great to copy the text of suttas, paste in a word processor, set the font you like, and then print out for reading.

Andika font seems like it would be nice for that, you can find it here, along with Charis (seems more typical), Doulos, and Gentium. Also, Bhikkhu Pesala has quite a few here.

Take Care, Everyone

[mirco]

Take a look on my reader application http://palitextreader.codeplex.com/

Dhamma Greetings Venerable Khantibalo,


when trying to start after installing it says "You must install pali canon library in order to run this application".
What to do next?


Best regards, Mirco

EDIT: I found the "pali canon library". Would be nice to have it included installationwise.

[pt1]

Hey everyone. This is kind of exciting... finally I've added a way to look up word (and phrase) references in the commentaries.

Hi Bhante Yuttadhammo,

Thanks for the reader. Very useful. Any plans to include tikas and later works in Pali? And in particular Abhidhammatha Sangaha an its commentary abhidhammattha vibhavini, as well as Visuddhimagga commentaries?

Best wishes

[yuttadhammo]

Thanks for the reader. Very useful. Any plans to include tikas and later works in Pali? And in particular Abhidhammatha Sangaha an its commentary abhidhammattha vibhavini, as well as Visuddhimagga commentaries?

Tikas are now included, commentary on Vism has been there for a while. I'm not sure where I'd put the Abhidhammatttha Sangaha, but it wouldn't be difficult to add it in.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my ISP; if you want the very latest version, don't wait for it to upgrade automatically, download it from http://pali.sirimangalo.org/ otherwise at the moment, you'll be stuck with v0.9

[pt1]

Thanks very much Bhante, the new version is great.

Tikas are now included, commentary on Vism has been there for a while. I'm not sure where I'd put the Abhidhammatttha Sangaha, but it wouldn't be difficult to add it in.

That'd be great. Not sure if this helps - on http://www.tipitaka.org/romn/ they put both the AS and vibhavini in the Abhidhamma Tika section, though it seems it would make more sense to put it in the Anya section together with Visuddhimagga and Byakarana and other more modern things...

You mentioned earlier in the thread you might need some help with the reader - anything specific? I've started studying Javascript recently, so perhaps I can study in the direction that might eventually enable me to help out a bit in the future.

Best wishes

[yuttadhammo]

Thanks very much Bhante, the new version is great.
That'd be great. Not sure if this helps - on http://www.tipitaka.org/romn/ they put both the AS and vibhavini in the Abhidhamma Tika section, though it seems it would make more sense to put it in the Anya section together with Visuddhimagga and Byakarana and other more modern things...

I'll try to figure something out

You mentioned earlier in the thread you might need some help with the reader - anything specific? I've started studying Javascript recently, so perhaps I can study in the direction that might eventually enable me to help out a bit in the future.

Heck, if you'd like to inherit the project, I would be happy to pass it off on you

Anyway, you can download the source code from sourceforge:

git://digitalpali.git.sourceforge.net/g ... igitalpali

and install it in Firefox as an unpacked extension:

1. Locate your profile folder and beneath it the profile you want to work with (e.g. Firefox/Profiles/<profile_id>.default/).
2. Open the extensions/ folder, creating it if need be.
3. Create a new text file and put the full path to your development folder inside (e.g. C:\extensions\digitalpalireader\ or ~/extensions/digitalpalireader/). Windows users should retain the OS' slash direction, and everyone should remember to include a closing slash and remove any trailing spaces.
4. Save the file with the id of your extension as its name (digitalpalireader@noah.yuttadhammo). No file extension.

Happy coding

[pt1]

Heck, if you'd like to inherit the project, I would be happy to pass it off on you

Thanks Bhante, I'll gladly accept - in a couple of years - when my javascript is up to scratch, and if you don't find a more suitable candidate in the meantime.

Thanks again for your good work.

Best wishes

[yuttadhammo]

Just a note that the Abhidhammattha Sangaha is now included in the DPR, and we're at our first Beta release

[yuttadhammo]

Just another update, now the DPR can export html files from sections or even groups of sections, and can analyze Pali text from a webpage as well.

[Kare]

Please accept my deeply felt thanks for this software! During my work translating the Majjhima Nikaya into Norwegian, I mainly use this DPR text now, although I still keep my Bangkok edition of the Pali Tipitaka open at my desk for comparison.

I have one question. Maybe I have not explored the software enough, but I have not yet found a way of keeping three windows open: 1. the Tipitaka, 2. the commentary text, linked to the relevant paragraph in the Tipitaka, and 3. the dictionary. Is this possible?

[Ytrog]

May I note one thing about the use of C#: it's not neccesarily a windows only application. You can use mono to be cross-platform: http://mono-framework.com/Main_Page

If anyone needs help with C#, Javascript or HTML: I'm a professional C# developer and have also extensive experience with Javascript (including jquery) and HTML. I might contribute to that codeplex project if so desired.

[BKh]

I have one question. Maybe I have not explored the software enough, but I have not yet found a way of keeping three windows open: 1. the Tipitaka, 2. the commentary text, linked to the relevant paragraph in the Tipitaka, and 3. the dictionary. Is this possible?

What version are you using? the current one is 2.5. The dictionary and search have been opening automatically in their own windows since at least 2.0. You should be able to do a ctrl-click on any link to a text, dictionary item or search result and have it open in a new tab. If you shift-click it will open the text in a pane side by side with the current text.

If you are upgrading an old version, be sure to read the help file as there are tons of new features.

Many thanks to Ven. Yuttadhammo for all the time he has spent making this valuable tool.

[Ytrog]

Just installed the android version. Nice work

[Kare]

I have one question. Maybe I have not explored the software enough, but I have not yet found a way of keeping three windows open: 1. the Tipitaka, 2. the commentary text, linked to the relevant paragraph in the Tipitaka, and 3. the dictionary. Is this possible?

What version are you using? the current one is 2.5. The dictionary and search have been opening automatically in their own windows since at least 2.0. You should be able to do a ctrl-click on any link to a text, dictionary item or search result and have it open in a new tab. If you shift-click it will open the text in a pane side by side with the current text.

If you are upgrading an old version, be sure to read the help file as there are tons of new features.

Many thanks to Ven. Yuttadhammo for all the time he has spent making this valuable tool.

Thank you for the advice. Now I've updated to 2.5, and it works fine!

And thank you once more, Ven. Yuttadhammo!

[piotr]

And thank you once more, Ven. Yuttadhammo!

Yes, this software is amazing.

[khantibalo]

I decided to rewrite my windows-only reader application http://palitextreader.codeplex.com to java platform.
Here is an early alpha version:
http://code.google.com/p/jpalireader/

It is going to be similar in most aspects to the previous version, with the following new features:
- cross-platform (100% java). should run on any platform with java support.
- two horizontal panes to open the books in. You can choose the pane in the "open book" dialog. move the divider to set pane sizes. very useful to compare passages.
- multi-language support. currently, it supports english and russian user interface. language is detected from the operating system settings.

This is an alpha version recommended for experienced computer users only. Not all features are there yet, but the most important are already implemented.
I have tested it on Windows and Linux. I want to know if it runs on MacOS and Android.