How to use this site

[Adutiya]

I was just on Sutta Central reading the Dhammapada (Dhp 1) translation by Anandajoti and there are words greyed out. i.e. “their quality is” and “follows”. I’m not sure what it means when the words are greyed out. I’m assuming that it is instead of using brackets, to insert words or phrases not found in the original in order to clarify the translation. I looked around for a page that might answer my question but didn’t see anything.

I was going to quote the verses in my question here, but I don’t know how to do it besides a basic cut and paste which isn’t like how other people insert sutta quotes. I’ve been on this site for several years and have never been able to figure this out as well as other functions. How does one learn these things?

Thank you for enduring my ignorance!

[Robbie]

@Adutiya

I’m not sure what it means when the words are greyed out . . . I’m assuming that it is instead of using brackets, to insert words or phrases not found in the original in order to clarify the translation.

Yes, you’re right! These are textual information tags. Their meaning is explained here: suttacentral.net/zz1/zz/test—I found a link to this page at suttacentral.net/methodology.

The greyed out words in Ānandajoti’s translation are of the .add type:

contains letters, words, or phrases inserted in the source text by an author, scribe, or a previous annotator or corrector.

---

@Adutiya

quote the verses

How I do it is with the > symbol. I simply type > in a new line and then paste the quotation. Then usually I include a link to the text. For example, this is what I type:

>Mind precedes thoughts, mind is their chief, their quality is made by mind
>
>https://suttacentral.net/dhp1-20/en/anandajoti

And this is what I get:

Mind precedes thoughts, mind is their chief, their quality is made by mind

SuttaCentral

You can even make quotes inside quotes! To do that use >>. For example, I type

> This is a quote
>> And this a quote inside a quote

And I get:

This is a quote

And this a quote inside a quote

---

@Adutiya

How does one learn these things?

One at a time?

PS: to get the horizontal bars I have been using, simply type --- on a new line.

[Adutiya]

Thanks, Robbie!

How is this done:

[Robbie]

@Adutiya

How is this done:

The only thing I know is pasting a link such as https://suttacentral.net/sn5.10/en/sujato in a separate line:

https://suttacentral.net/sn5.10/en/sujato

Sadly for now the oneboxes don’t share the relevant information as they do in your screenshot. But that seems to be a problem with SuttaCentral:

Generic SuttaCentral Oneboxes

When I post a link to a sutta, like this the OneBox gives a generic blurb for the whole site instead of a specific blurb for that sutta. For what it’s worth, the preview on Facebook has the right title, but still a generic blurb: [image] Is there something SuttaCentral can do to improve this, or is it totally up to the Facebook and Discuss code how to preview links?

[Adutiya]

Easy! Thanks!

[Aminah]

Much thanks @Robbie!

Re:

@Robbie

Sadly for now the oneboxes don’t share the relevant information as they do in your screenshot. But that seems to be a problem with SuttaCentral:

Yes, this has been a rolling along for a while. The social sharing image was attended to in an update a little while ago (as per Update SC's social sharing image · Issue #1400 · suttacentral/suttacentral · GitHub), but sorting out the actual info given in the onebox is still pending (Update SC's social sharing information · Issue #1486 · suttacentral/suttacentral · GitHub), although I was led to believe it did now work on Facebook (I don’t use it, myself, so wouldn’t know).

[karl_lew]

@Adutiya

how other people insert sutta quotes.

It’s actually hard to insert sutta quotes. Here is a sutta quote:

SN42.11:2.11: For desire is the root of suffering.

And THIS is what I had to type:

> [SN42.11:2.11](https://suttacentral.net/sn42.11/en/sujato#sn42.11:2.11): For desire is the root of suffering.

As you can see, one might querulously quibble without qualm that such a quote leads to quite a quandary.

If you have Linux and are happy with command line stuff, you can use scv-bilara, which automatically creates quote links. For the above quote, one merely types:

./scripts/search -om1 root of suffering

The scv-bilara program is actually what Voice itself uses for search. I regularly use scv-bilara for studying the EBTs. Anagarika @Sabbamitta also uses it for her ongoing translation work.

At this point we do not have a nice, web interface to generate quote links as scv-bilara does. We’d like to have that capability, but we haven’t yet figured out how the user interface would look like. We do have the functionality in scv-bilara.

[Snowbird]

@karl_lew

And THIS is what I had to type:

You can also select the part you want to make a link and then click the link icon and paste in the url. If you don’t like clicking icons, the universal Ctrl K shortcut also works to get the link dialog box.