SuttaCentral 2021: we are live!

[Senryu]

@Bob1

So sorry to say the old one was better much better, now we dont get verse numbers and the roll over pali was useful, you bottom box of pail to english is way to spacy causing me to use the mouse way more that the old way.

Well for me, the Pāli lookup caused copy and paste issues quite severely. Plus when one definition popped up it was really troublesome if you try to move to another word, and required very delicate manoeuvring to get to the right words in such cases, to do with bubbles and having to move the cursor only through the gaps to avoid issues… complicated to explain. So I’m glad it’s changed!

One thing I did notice - I think it was this passage:

‘yāvadeva sītassa paṭighātāya, uṇhassa paṭighātāya, ḍaṁsamakasavātātapasarīsapasamphassānaṁ paṭighātāya, yāvadeva hirikopīnappaṭicchādanatthaṁ’.

I was looking as this earlier today and so far as I remember, clicking on ḍaṁsamakasavātātapasarīsapasamphassānaṁ (possibly the longest compound I’ve ever seen!), broke it down into the separate parts and gave translations. Great!

However, I think it was hirikopīnappaṭicchādanatthaṁ that gave no results at all

I tried to confirm that now, but… the lookup is not working at all, for anything! Here’s a screenshot - I think I have the settings correct?

Anyone have any ideas why? (Mac, Chrome)

[sujato]

@JDavid

When I search for a Pali word, no results in Pali texts are returned. Is this by design? If so, the filter for root texts should be removed.

Oops, no, this is a bug, we mustn’t have indexed the Pali texts, will get on to it.

@tracy

this is a ton of improvements in all sorts of ways

Thanks!

@Senryu

However, I think it was hirikopīnappaṭicchādanatthaṁ that gave no results at all

Just checking that word now, and it works fine.

It looks like some bug in your browser. Can you check your browser console (Right click > inspect > console) and see if there are any red error messages?

@Senryu

copy and paste issues quite severely

Indeed. In addition, the lookup tool lets us click on a head word and go to the full entry; it gives grammatical details; also cross-references; also more detailed entries in many cases.

[Senryu]

@sujato

It looks like some bug in your browser. Can you check your browser console (Right click > inspect > console) and see if there are any red error messages?

So, I get this:

Now I tried reloading the page, and that did fix it. However, then I tried copying the url, opening a new tab, pasting the url (which had /sujato#5.2 at the end so I deleted that to just /sujato#5.2 ), and again the lookup is not working. So I reloaded the page, and, it works. Hopefully this is useful info? happy to do more tests at your instruction if helpful.

@sujato

Indeed. In addition, the lookup tool lets us click on a head word and go to the full entry; it gives grammatical details; also cross-references; also more detailed entries in many cases.

Awesome!

Also, now that I have it working, I have found which compound it did not work with:

[sujato]

@Senryu

Hopefully this is useful info? happy to do more tests at your instruction if helpful.

Thanks. I’m not sure we can do anything at the moment, but keep us posted if the issue recurs, especially if you notice any patterns.

@Senryu

Also, now that I have it working, I have found which compound it did not work with:

Yes, that one it doesn’t get. It’s not 100%. Here you go:

• utu = weather
• parissaya = risk, trouble
• vinodana = dispelling
• paṭisallāna = retreat, solitude
• ārāma = enjoyment
• atthaṁ = for the purpose of

[Senryu]

@sujato

Thanks. I’m not sure we can do anything at the moment, but keep us posted if the issue recurs, especially if you notice any patterns.

Ok sure. I just ran a test - I googled: MN31 suttacentral - the followed the link (your translation for all of these tests hence with Pāli + English). The Pāli line by line came up automatically - excellent! It was always a bit of a hassle having to go into the menu to turn that on at every new page I went to.

But, the Pāli lookup was not working. Even though it was automatically switched on (nice, must be remembering me). Copied the URL, pasted in a new tab, and the lookup works.

Tried the same procedure with MN 12. Worked straight off from the google link. Tried another MN, same, works straight off.

Tried new window for the first step of the procedure instead of new tab in case that was a variable. Works again. Tried another, still works. Also, before the first of these, I did what I believe with moderate confidence was the same procedure, and it worked. Most likely using a new window rather than tab but not sure. And, it did work. I neglected to mention this because then I tried it again, and it did not work. Which is why I continued, as this made me uncertain of attending to all variables the first time. However, I think that was the case. Furthermore, since as I reported earlier, it went from working to not working (with unrecorded variables). In conclusion, it seems… intermittent?

Sorry that I have not been able to pinpoint the causal variable.

@sujato

Yes, that one it doesn’t get. It’s not 100%. Here you go:

• utu = weather
• parissaya = risk, trouble
• vinodana = dispelling
• paṭisallāna = retreat, solitude
• ārāma = enjoyment
• atthaṁ = for the purpose of

Oh thanks! I guess it must be hard work getting compound breaking working smoothly! I could imagine a compromise solution which I could mention if useful, though I do not know about programming and whether it would be easy to do…

Also, I had two pasting issues today. No big deal but in case it’s useful for you? One so far as I remember was the deletion of a space between words, where the former word was italicised in the source. The second was pasting from wikipedia, the space disappeared proceeding a hyperlink - see ‘Buddhistmonastery’

I try again here:
The Jivakarama vihara , also Jivaka Amravana vihara (Amra-vana means “mango garden”),[1]Jivakamravana , Jivakamrabana or Jivakavanarama , is an ancient Buddhist monastery, or vihara, established at the time of the Buddha.[2][3][4]

How curious, it appears fine in the preview on the right hand side!

Let’s see if it changes when I post!

Edit: It worked fine! Perhaps it’s when put as a quote. I will try:

The Jivakarama vihara , also Jivaka Amravana vihara (Amra-vana means “mango garden”),[1]Jivakamravana , Jivakamrabana or Jivakavanarama , is an ancient Buddhist monastery, or vihara, established at the time of the Buddha.[2][3][4]

Hm… still fine in the preview on the right! We will see when I post it…
Edit: curious, that still works. Well, perhaps that is all I can explore for now.

[ChrisW]

For me the “Side by side” and/or “Line by line” translation doesn’t work.

I’m using Windows 10 with a desktop PC, the latest version of Chrome, and a good internet connection.

I did an “Empty cache and hard reload” kind of page refresh.

I do see errors in the browser’s developer console but the *.js is minified so I can’t easily help you understand it:

Good news (for me):

• I don’t get this problem with the Edge browser
• The problem goes away in Chrome when I select one of the “Show notes and variants in segmented texts” as shown below – none of these options were initially selected by default as shown above

Even with this change I still see those error messages in the Chrome developer console.

I don’t think I see them in the Edge console (but I’m less familiar with its dev tools UI).

---

Edge reports several “issues” however, at least one of which may be important:

I think HTTP cache | webhint documentation is complaining about the filenames of your *.js files e.g. “main.js” and “946.js” – the thing is that each time you release a different version of the minified JS then it should have a different filename (because the old version of the JS is cached all over the placed, in users’ browsers and in proxies) – so a filename like “main-20210320-0903.js” would be normal, but a name like “main.js” seems to me to be asking for trouble – it means whenever a user reports a bug, the first thing you have to ask them is, “Could you please try to clear your caches and try again?” which is impossibly difficult for users.

---

@Upasako

In the new version, I am not able to activate this feature (Pali text on the side in Sinhala)

This may be the same problem you were having.

[ChrisW]

For me the “Activate Pali word lookup” (to English) doesn’t work, neither using Chrome nor Edge (on a Windows 10 PC).

How is it supposed to work – is it like before – I’m trying to do it by using the mouse to hover over a Pali word which I displayed using the “View root text with translation” feature on one of your translations.

[mikenz66]

In this version you click on the Pali word, and the translation appears at the bottom. You can then navigate from word to word.

[ChrisW]

Ok thank you. So:

• Clicking (or mouse-hovering) on a Pali word, which I displayed using “Activate Pali word lookup”, now does nothing (and causes no network requests).
• But it does work, when I click on the Pali (untranslated) version of the text.

I used to enjoy:

• Displaying one of Ven Sujato’s translations
• Activating “View root text with translation”
• Using “Activate Pali word lookup” for specific words, to compare with or to better-understand the translation

[mikenz66]

@ChrisW

• Clicking (or mouse-hovering) on a Pali word, which I displayed using “Activate Pali word lookup”, now does nothing (and causes no network requests).
• But it does work, when I click on the Pali (untranslated) version of the text.

That sounds like a bug. For me it works for the English-Pali display. I’m using Chrome on Linux, and I just tried it on a Windows 10 VM and Chrome and Edge work there.

I did clear cookies and cache completely. I think that helps.

[ChrisW]

@mikenz66

I did clear cookies and cache completely. I think that helps.

Thank you again.

My doing “Empty cache and hard reload” in Chrome wasn’t enough – but deleting everything (i.e. cache and local and database storage, service workers and cookies) using chrome://settings/siteData?searchSubpage=suttacentral was enough to fix that.

So maybe the root problem is as mentioned above, i.e. the software’s not mangling its resource names with a version-related unique id, causing stale-cache problems, and/or expecting users to delete this kind of thing themselves.

[5skandhas]

Thank you so much, Bhante!

I’m also letting my German-speaking friends know that the site now has good support for German.

Sādhu, Sādhu, Sādhu!

[NandhaNanda]

Bhante, Sadhu Anumodana to everyone who made this possible. Rejoice

[JDavid]

@JDavid

When I search for a Pali word, no results in Pali texts are returned. Is this by design? If so, the filter for root texts should be removed.

Hello @sujato,
Please let me know when you have a provisional indexed URL, and I’ll begin testing.
Thanks!
David.

[Invo]

Sadhu, Sadhu, Sadhu! It had to be a lot of work with a lot of people involved. Thank you Bhante Sujato, Ajahn Brahmali and the rest of the team and supporters for bringing it to us.

It indeed works much faster, which is a great help, especially when using in places where connection is worse (like during a travel by train etc.).

In general I think it looks much better right now and is more intuitive. I find it more inviting to explore right now. I also like that even the chapters of nikayas were translated into english, it helps remember whats what.

What is also a great new feature for me is that it is easier now to link Bhante Sujato translation in a particular paragraph, just by clicking on the segment number it immediately gives link to this particular place.

My only concern is with the fact that when I use it on computer (windows 10, google chrome), I cannot turn off segment number view on Bhante Sujato translations. It is unfortunate, because when you’d like to copy the text to a friend or to your hard drive notepad or something, it copies with the numbers, so then you need to remove them manually if you want plain text. I also think it would be great to be able to view it plain just for sake of aesthethics if someone likes to. I would personally preffer version without sugmented numbers, and just turn them on only when I’d like to link particular paragraph to someone.

On the other hand, when I’m using phone (android, CM browser), I don’t see segmended numbers and can’t turn them on.

Is this issue already looked into? If not, I just wanted to express that it would be great if there was an option to turn off and on visibility of segmented numbers on all devices/browsers. Especially to be able to turn off their visibility on a computer.

Aside from that, it is truly marvelous job and I feel that new version is a beautiful upgrade Much mudita for this samma kammanta. I hope it brings great merit to those who created it, and to those who use it.

[Radius]

@Invo

I cannot turn off segment number view

I had the same until I saw this…

@Snowbird

Question, I can’t find out how to turn off segment numbers. Is that possible? EDIT: Ah, I see those are what are called “Reference”.

Select ‘None’ for references and you’ll be back to Zen mode viewing

[Invo]

@Radius

Select ‘None’ for references and you’ll be back to Zen mode viewing

Thank you I did not notice this, because I didn’t see the scroll bar at the bottom of the “views” menu. Now everything makes sense.

Allright, so for me new Suttacentral is absolutely perfect. I’m actually reading suttas everyday right now btw., it’s absolutely my favorite website presenting words of my favorite “person” - the Buddha! Thank you SuttaCentral!

[Dana]

Sadhu! Thank you Suttacentral!
Except now the bilinear and parallel viewing options for texts are not working for me. What to do?
Thank you.
Dana

[Nimal]

@Dana

parallel viewing options for texts are not working for me

I have the same problem and I use google chrome as my browser.
With Metta

[Snowbird]

@Radius

Select ‘None’ for references and you’ll be back to Zen mode viewing

@sujato Bhante, you may be (painfully?) aware that the check boxes don’t behave logically, namely that if you check “none” other boxes remain checked.