Digital Pali Reader Weblog

Making a Firefox extension seemed like a pretty good idea, but then I found out that the world has already started to move on to Google Chrome, now that it too has extensions. So, plugging away again, I have come up with the Digital Pali Reader for Google Chrome. Download it here:

Google Chrome DPR extension

As many are aware, I’ve wasted put a great amount of time into creating the Digital Pali Reader as a tool to make reading the Pali texts easier for those who already have basic grammar skills. Well, a couple of months ago, while touring Northern Thailand together, one of my students gave me the idea to turn it into a Firefox extension, something I’d never thought of before but which is ideal for this particular project.

I immediately assumed it would take a lot of tweaking to turn a javascript and xml based project into a Firefox extension; turns out all it took was adding a container file, setting some variables and creating the right file structure. In a short time, I had a semi-working extension up and running. Cookies didn’t seem to work, so rather than figure out why, I moved to using Firefox’s in-built preference system, much preferable anyway. That part isn’t finished yet, but it works with a restart after changing the preferences. The rest seems to work as it should. Anyone interested should now download the reader here:

https://gaea.site5.com/~sirimang/pali/digitalpalireader.xpi

Let me know if it actually works outside of the lab.

DPR 5.11 is out, and I finally got around to doing two things:

1) I fixed a bug that repeated parts of compounds like mayamettha = maya-mayam-ettha.
2) I added color configuration support. Still basic and a few omissions, but better than nothing.

Dear Friends,

Happy to announce the release of DPR 5.0, just a short time after releasing 4.31. Why the sudden jump in numbering, you ask? It might be a little hard to tell, but I’ve put the whole program through a total reworking. You can see by the new background images that cast shadows in each other… that’s the magic of divs as opposed to frames. Anyway, it took a while to do, but I think it will make tweaking the thing a whole lot easier now. Also some other additions, so check it out, as always at the sourceforge page:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/digitalpali/

Dear Friends, the latest 4.24 edition of the DPR has the ability to add in extra language dictionaries, which will allow one to translate from Pali into one’s own language. I created four dictionaries myself, using google translate, and have uploaded them to sourceforge here:

Pali-French Dictionary
Pali-German Dictionary
Pali-Spanish Dictionary
Pali-Thai Dictionary

Each archive contains a single javascript file that should be added to the /DPR/DPR/js folder. This will activate the dropdown menu at the bottom right, and clicking on a word in the main window will give a definition in the corresponding language. Note that these dictionaries were created through automation, and are most likely far from perfect.

Sorry to take so long updating, but DPR is in it’s fourth release now. Lots of new features and bug fixes. I think I created a bug in the latest release, though, so some compounds may cause problems for the algorithm. Bear with me

Yes, indeed, several small bugs and I forgot to include the Vism. This one has the Vism and Mahatika, and several bug fixes besides, including complete tipitaka searches and better searches of a collection. New download page too:

http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=164784&sel_platform=4716

I’ve opened a forum topic dedicated to the DPR here:

http://forum.sirimangalo.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20

You have to be logged in to post, but please do take the time to let me know about any problems you may have with the reader.