It is in fact missing most of the translators. There are actually lots and lots of translators of English texts. But Bhante Sujato is the only one who has all of the major and most of the minor books. (He doesnāt have Vv, Pv, or Ja). Bhante Bodhi has a whole lot (and heās popular) so thatās why I included him.
The app works from a table of available suttas on each of the websites. To add all the translators to the interface would require keeping lots more information about what exists on SuttaCentral. And there is no mechanism for me to be informed when new ones are added. But I agree it would be a great feature.
You are absolutely correct that the app relies on SCās functionality of falling back to whatever translation exists. My thought with the app was giving people a quick way to get to a translation, not generating a perfect link. Thatās why I donāt default to the āAllā, aka SuttaPlex card. Because that would require an extra click to get to a translation. And there is only a very narrow selection of suttas (in the Vv and Pv) that wonāt redirect you to a translation because they donāt exist on SC.
Iāve tweaked the instructions (in the info tab) to make the behaviour a little more clear.
For the Ancient Buddhist Text website I do actually have full links stored to the pages because they are done in words not just citations that can be calculated like the other sites.
It didnāt make sense to me to keep track of the five different translators of the Jatakas when SC would be able to get you to the right place anyway.
One thought that I had was to not display the link as part of the button. Having it there made it easier to troubleshoot, but it may not make sense to show it to the user as it does seem like it may be promising something that doesnāt exist.
Thanks so much for the feedback! Itās really helpful.
No. I mean that it wasnāt clear that they were greyed out. To be fair, I was on my phone when I first tried it, so I was watching where to put my finger rather than what was happening in the UI.
I think even just a simple separator line (or different colour background for each) wouldāve helped me understand they were two different functions. Obviously now that I understand it, I see it as two separate functions.
And I really like that.
I like my interfaces to be explicit, but I see what you mean. Maybe having them say ānothing availableā is just cluttering it up.
Effectively theyāre buttons, so they could be greyed out (and empty) while nothing is available I guess? It would make the interface more consistent? Maybe?
And very handy that is too!
To be clear, it didnāt take me long to work out what was going on, and once I had it was fine. I was just monitoring and recording my confusion when first presented with the interface.
Itās a pleasure. I know how hard it is to get feedback on these things sometimes.
Oh, gosh, Iām thick. I didnāt realize that you had taken the time to make a real mockup so your label confused me. At some point I think I may have grayed the text out too, but obviously that wasnāt happening. Thanks so much. Thatās super helpful. Fixed now.
Iāll keep all your other comments in mind, especially as I try to integrate the Pali name lookup tool. Any thoughts on that?
This is a somewhat complex issue that Hongda is currently working on. We want to make it so that ārange suttasā (mainly dhp and the AN 1s and AN 2s, tho the concept could be extended further) can be accessed via different URLs. Normally on SC, of course, one URL = 1 resource. But in these cases there is no one, ānaturalā way to present the texts.
So the aim with Dhammapada would be that normal navigation remains as-is (via vagga). But you can also navigation to a single verse (/dhp123) or to the whole Dhammapada on a page, with the verse linked (/dhp#123). Itās a tricky one, because the concept of one sutta = one page is baked deeply into SC, and it affects a range of Page data. You can track progress here.
Thatās wonderful. A prerequisite for criticizing any sutta website should be that you have to try and make one first. The number of tricky bits is almost limitless. Thanks for all your hard work. And the whole team, of course.
Initial thoughts on Sutta name look up. It worked exactly as I thought it would. Itās fantastic!
I canāt imagine using the exact match, but itās good to have it there. I would prefer not to have to choose a language - my brain works in both English and āsloppyā (I mean fuzzy ) pali interchangeably, so āeitherā might be an additional language option?
As far as integration goes I havenāt really thought about itās feasibility, but one box that I can type whatever - number or name (incl regex) in whatever language, but also retain some āadvanced levelā for finer control. Would be awesome to have PTS lookup tool integrated in there too at some point?
I have a feeling that these tools are going to be hanging out in my open tabs pretty much constantly. Thanks once again for them!
This is awesome, Iāve used it every day since - reading alternate translations which I would likely not have otherwise accessed. I donāt read pali, but this is a very easy way to get another angle.
Anyway, some feedback on a quirk - itās not a problem for me, just an fyi. For a change, I thought to investigate a random Therigatha verse, Iāve heard of them but never read anyā¦didnāt even know where to find them(!). SuttaFriends > Theri > random verse took me to Thig11.1. Once Iād read it, as an experiment, into the main search box of Citation Helper I entered Thig11ā¦and the page goes completely blank. (repeatable, same behavior in Edge and Chrome).
Thanks again for providing this, sometimes just a few small words translated differently can open up a new understanding.
OK, should be fixed now. For anyone curious about why this was happeningā¦
Books are either a collection of suttas or a collection of chapters with suttas in them. And on the three websites the plugin really deals with (at least by calculating the urls programmatically) that is the limit to the levels, even though traditionally there may be more internal grouping.
There is one unusual case though, and thatās with the Thera and Therigatha. In those books there are a few chapters that, in effect, only have a single sutta. SuttaCentral and SuttaFriends deal with this by giving them the citation chapter.1. So for example, Thig11.1. But there is only one āsuttaā aka Theri in that chapter. However, on DhammaTalks.org, this is sutta has the citation Thig11.
Right now you can get all three links, but the script will only give you SC and SF if you put in Thag11.1. But along the way, when you type āThag11ā it will pop up DT. Not ideal, but at least now itās not broken!
hmmm I expected the sutta name to be linkafied too (not just the number). And I expected the link to take to me to the sutta.rf āCitation Helperā so I could get my pick of translation / PÄli
Integrating the name lookup into the citation tool is a bigger project. Iām still not sure how I want to do that. For me Iām happy to always be taken to sc (after all, there is almost always a translation waiting there) and then if I do need other translations go back and look those up. But I can understand why that would not be great for everyone.
If the citation helper supported links you wouldnāt have to integrate beyond constructing the link. Just add a query param ?ref=DN%204 or whatever, no?
Right. Thatās probably how I will implement it, but it would still be as an option. I probably have a distorted perception of my data usage (OK, I definitely do) and data usage in general, but I would think that loading that whole citation helper tool each time would be a bit much.
Now you can also get links for PaliAudio.com and Voice.SuttaCentral.net. PaliAudio just has single pages for each chapter of the SN an AN, so you need to do a bit of looking once you follow the link. But for DN and MN itās a direct link to the page with the audio.
Voice itself is having some minor bugs, but once things are fixed there you shouldnāt notice any problems.
Also, now there is a way to select which sites you want to include in your search. And all settings are saved from session to session.
Pali title of the sutta is displayed at the top of the app. Still trying to decide if it should give the Pali or English name (or both)
The url is now a permalink to whatever sutta you are looking up. So when you have typed in mn23, the url will now look like this: sutta.readingfaithfully.org/?q=mn23
Due to the work and persistence of Ven @Khemarato.bhikkhu, the Citation Helper app now puts history in your browser like any ordinary website. As long as you stay in the same tab, it will allow you to go back and forward through your history by clicking the browser buttons.
I also wanted to mention that having the citation in the url bar (like sutta.readingfaithfully.org/?q=sn46.38) now allows you to use any of a number of plugins in your browser that let you select and search for text. So, for exampleā¦
Let me know if you try it out and if you have any problems.
These plugins are really useful in general if you often find yourself, for example, trying to find book titles on a certain book website like GoodReads or Amazon. And, come to think of it, you can do it for SuttaCentral too. The search string would be
) pali interchangeably, so āeitherā might be an additional language option?
