New Bilara launch date: Monday 17 August

sujato · August 13, 2026, 12:44am

I just had a discussion with @HongDa, and we believe we’ve addressed all blocking issues and are ready to launch the new Bilara on Monday.

Hongda will put a flag on old Bilara to notify users.

The process is:

Take down old Bilara.
Refresh data in new Bilara format (i.e., all segments are explicitly aligned in the data).
Load data in new bilara.
Point new Bilara to the bilara.suttacentral.net URL.
Make sure permissions for users are set up properly.
Ensure changes propagate to Github.
Test all functions.
Invite users back.

All going well, this should not take long. Translators will have to cease work until its done, but we aim for it to be no more than a couple of days. Having said which, well, things rarely work out as they should.

Hongda and I will be available during the week. Surely there will be bugs and issues exposed as we start work, and we will aim to address these as quickly as possible. Please bear in mind that no software is perfect at launch, and this has become a pretty complex app. So your patience is appreciated!

@Bilalamitta @Bilara @Translators

Dogen · August 13, 2026, 12:50am

Sabbe sankharā dukkhā!

We’re much obliged for all the hardwork by you and all the volunteers involved, bhante. May the launch surprise us by going smoother than expected!

WayChuang · August 13, 2026, 2:27am

Sabbe te antarāyā vinassantu

Begone all bugs.

sabbamitta · August 16, 2026, 5:06pm

Exciting times! I’ve just wrapped up my projects in the old Bilara and made publish requests for my latest changes.

Saying good-bye to an old friend now! It has served us for so many years, and has served us well.

sabbehi piyehi manāpehi nānābhāvo vinābhāvo aññathābhāvo
We must be parted and separated from all we hold dear and beloved!

May all tech devas be with us and protect the transition!

sujato · August 16, 2026, 10:39pm

So new Bilara is up and I’m testing it now. I’ll record bugs as i notice them. Amazing how this just happens!

(feature)—we should put the sutta UID in the HTML <title> so we can see it in the browser tab.
login should be persistent, currently I have to login each time.
The “Search” button is still animated, no button should move when you press it!
Sometimes when opening a subdirectory in the Home page navigation, it takes an unacceptably long time, eg. SN 22 (which is a large collection)
The “Hide/Show Search Panel” animation is clunky and not smooth.
Also, no need to say “panel”.
The segment ID should fall outside the text field so as to not create excessive padding at the top of text fields (see screenshot below)
The outline of active text fields is partly hidden (Firefox)

For the last two items, the current view:

What I’m wanting to see:

HongDa · August 17, 2026, 12:31am

Bhante, are we having a meeting today?

sujato · August 17, 2026, 5:29am

Hi, I’ve been caught up with other things, but I’m free now? If not, I’ll be around tomorrow.

HongDa · August 17, 2026, 5:58am

Bhante, yes, I’m free now.

Bhante, we currently have a script for aligning segment id. My question is: should we align only the “unpublished” branch, or both the “published” and “unpublished” branches?

sujato · August 17, 2026, 11:54pm

Align both.

I have a meeting in a few minutes, so can we maybe meet a bit late, say at 10:30 AEST?

HongDa · August 17, 2026, 11:56pm

Bhante, sure, see you later.

HongDa · August 18, 2026, 2:56am

Bhante @sujato , I have aligned the segment IDs of the published and unpublished branches and synchronized them to the new Bilara server. Please check it when you have time.

sujato · August 18, 2026, 6:28am

I see the aligned texts, that looks good.

I’ve also made an edit to a comment, waiting to see if it propagates to Github … ok it’s been like ten minutes, I can’t see the new text at an1.322:1.1 here.

github.com/suttacentral/bilara-data

comment/en/sujato/sutta/an/an1/an1.316-332_comment-en-sujato.json

unpublished

{
  "an1.316:0.1": "",
  "an1.316:0.2": "",
  "an1.316:1.0": "",
  "an1.316:1.1": "",
  "an1.316:1.2": "",
  "an1.316:1.3": "",
  "an1.316:1.4": "",
  "an1.316:1.5": "",
  "an1.317:1.0": "",
  "an1.317:1.1": "",
  "an1.317:1.2": "",
  "an1.317:1.3": "",
  "an1.317:1.4": "",
  "an1.317:1.5": "",
  "an1.318:1.0": "",
  "an1.318:1.1": "",
  "an1.318:1.2": "",
  "an1.319:1.0": "",
  "an1.319:1.1": "This is Makkhali Gosāla, who denied causality ([dn2:19.1]()). He was the founder of the Ājīvakas, who became the third largest ascetic movement after Buddhism and Jainism. None of their texts survive, but their teachings can be partially reconstructed from Buddhist and Jain sources. He practiced with Mahāvīra for six years before an acrimonious split, following which he developed his doctrine of hard determinism. _Makkhali_ denotes a kind of ascetic bearing a bamboo staff, so (like the similar appellations _nigaṇṭha_ and _samaṇa_) it indicates his affiliation. This being so, and noting that Buddhist Sanskrit texts spell his name as _gośālīputra_ etc., the second name (like _nātaputta_ and _gotama_) might indicate his clan. However, I can find no trace of such a clan, and both Jain and Buddhist tradition, albeit unreliably, say the name arose because he was born in a cowshed. ",

This file has been truncated. show original

HongDa · August 18, 2026, 8:35am

I have implemented this feature;

HongDa · August 18, 2026, 10:46am

The current workflow allows users to view their modifications on the “unpublished changes” page after editing the translation; these changes are not automatically pushed to the remote unpublished branch. They are only pushed to the remote unpublished branch—and a pull request created—once the user publishes them.

If switch to automatically pushing to the remote unpublished branch, will no longer be able to see the current changes on the “unpublished changes” page.

WayChuang · August 18, 2026, 12:39pm

This is cool. With the old bilara, I have to review my changes by looking at the git diff patches. Then go back to bilara to make corrections, before making another PR.

sabbamitta · August 18, 2026, 12:52pm

This sounds as if the unpublished branch becomes redundant then?

I would very much appreciate changes to be pushed to unpublished before being published. Because Bilara search has never been very useful to me I have always searched the unpublished branch with Karl’s scv-bilara (this is not the scv-bilara search used for the Voice website, but only something I use in my terminal on my machine; the web app only searches published of course). This will then not be possible any more unless the change is already published.

So far this also allowed me to view changes that Bhante Sujato made before these were published. It often happens that I have a term that I want to change and then when looking it up discover that Bhante has revised his translation, but not published it yet. As I am relying on his translation, this has been very useful to me because I could then consider his latest version in my own decision how to translate the respective term. With the new workflow I won’t have easy access to this information any more.

Would it be possible that these two things—pushing to the unpublished branch and creating a pull request for publishing—are separated?

There has been mention of the “unpublished changes” page before, but I didn’t realize the implications until now.

sujato · August 18, 2026, 9:35pm

Oh no, we have to change this. I had no idea, and I’m not sure where this comes from. The roles of the unpublished and published branches are essential, and must not change. For just one of many reasons, having unpublished on a local git branch lets you make kinds of changes that are not possible thru the web interface. The web interface is designed to be enable a subset of possible changes, but there will always be exceptions.

The “Unpublished changes” page is an enhancement, not a replacement. It should let you view what is on the unpublished branch. That’s literally why it’s called that!

Again, I apologize, I had no idea this was the case. It looks like maybe there was a misunderstanding at some point in the development. This seems so obvious to me that I probably forgot to check it.

Well, will you look at that. I just reviewed the bug reported here:

And it turns out the correct footnote, which was quite complex, survived only in the unpublished branch. I was able to rescue it because literally the whole purpose of git is that everything is preserved and you can recover anything. Which is why the unpublished branch exists in the first place.

sujato · August 18, 2026, 9:46pm

Another breaking bug: I can no longer see my comments. It worked fine yesterday.

Screenshot:

HongDa · August 19, 2026, 12:07am

Bhante, no problem, it’s not a very complex change.

However, automatically committing every change to the unpublished branch might place a significant load on the server. I’ll implement the changes and see how it goes.

HongDa · August 19, 2026, 12:27am

This might be caused by the alignment of segment IDs yesterday; I will check.