The Pali Text Reader

PALI TEXT READER

Download

http://sourceforge.net/projects/palireader/

The Pali Text Reader software is a reading and studying tool for Buddhist Pali texts. It will provide an in-depth search, an expandable dictionary with already more than 20,000 entries and an automatic translation mechanism. The Pali Text Reader contains a library of all Tipitaka books based on the classic and acknowledged Chatta Sangayana Edition (plus some bonus texts).

Some key features...

· incremental search;
· tree-view based open book menu with all VRI and additional volumes;
· memory function: starts program with last open book(s);
· customizable font and page settings;
· translator function (based on machine trained corpus – not in beta version);
· dictionary with +20,000 entries (Pali-English, English-Pali)
· fast real-time in-depth search (using Boyer Moore);
· convenient word-lookup via context menu;
· even more convenient: mouse-over word by word translation
· word compound analyzer (very rudimentary);
· marking, highlighting text passages for easy retrieval later on;
· auto-conversion into Velthuis for non-unicode export,
· switch between atthakatha, mula and tika;
· features to come include: a bookmark manager for easy retrieval and sharing of texts and passages; export books and passages to RTF, UNICODE, PDF and BBEB;

Background story:
Pali is an ancient middle Indian language, either being Buddha’s own mother tongue or at least a language closely related to the Blessed Ones own language. For over 2500 years Buddhist tradition handed down a vast amount of scriptures all written in Pali, which contains the accumulated wisdom of the Buddhist teaching.
During the 90′s, in a joint effort, the Pali Canon literature (containing several thousand pages) was digitized and published by the VRI, a none profit organisation. Their CDROM, the “Chattha Sangayana CDROM” or CSCD has been since one of the foremost tools when studying the source of Buddhist teaching. However, the software which handled reading and studying the volumes quite well, is not open source. Quite contrary, the Pali Text Reader is based on a plugin framework inviting users to improve and customize the reader to their needs. Besides, being written in C# its developers hope to port it soon to Linux/Unix and Macintosh…