I wanted to let y’all know about some ideas we have cooking, namely the development of “publications” for SuttaCentral. This has come up in a number of conversations, so I thought I’d address it front on.
what is a “publication”
A publication is more-or-less a “book”. But not a book in the sense of a physical entity with pages, rather in the concept of a book which can be expressed in multiple forms, including but not limited to, paper printing.
web
epub
pdf
print (from pdf)
audio
The content of a publication is more or less what you would expect from a traditional “book” of suttas. That is to say, it would include:
A collection of suttas
typically a nikaya, etc.
front matter and back matter
The front and back matter might include such things as:
cover
title page
licensing/publication page
table of contents
preface
bio
acknowledgements
introduction
index
notes
appendices
and so on.
The idea is that this “matter” will be wrapped up together with the sutta “content” to make up a “publication”. Then you can have a specific entity that collects the relevant material for that publication, eg. a epub file, a physical book, an audio book, etc. In each case, the content will be adapted to the form; for example, physical books are limited by size, whereas an epub is not.
We’ll develop a UI on SuttaCentral so that you can download the “publication” in your preferred form, or eg. order a book online. In addition, the API will be available for those who wish to develop their own specialized “publications”.
scope
Publications are primarily intended for complete translations of major divisions of scripture. It only includes new translations made by SuttaCentral on our Bilara software, and will not be extended to cover legacy translations.
Initially we’ll focus on the English translations by myself and Ven Brahmali, then extend it to other languages.
Partial translations are not in immediate scope. Nor is publishing root languages a priority: there are plenty of printed and electronic editions already. But we may extend the concept in time to allow such things, as well as customization of output in various ways.
roadmap
We’re still in early stages, but I am hoping to build this in Q1 2022.
Let us know any ideas you have, and to learn more, check out our (incomplete and evolving!) project on Github.
Since you helped me use bilara i/o about a year ago I’ve been doing my sutta reading of your translation on an ebook reader with Pali followed by English line by line. Although I am mostly reading the English, I think it’s a wonderful way to work with the text. With the Pail in bold, I’m able to skip over it without even thinking now, and only refer back to it when needed.
I don’t know how many people would do this on an e-ink device, but I believe it fills a much needed gap. If at all possible I’d love to see this line by line option as part of the initial release. It shouldn’t be that hard for the big benefit it would give.
Side by side, although wonderful for print, seems just too complicated to be worth it in an initial release.
The only difficulty I’ve come across is the fact that verses are also line by line, even when the translation is not matching line by line, kind of making it pointless. So for verses, alternating Pali and English verse by verse makes much more sense to me.
