Introduction

This is a reader application for Pali Tipitaka in Roman script. It provides handy navigation features as well as a search facility and dictionary lookup.

Installation and removal

License

This is a free application distributed under GNU GPL v2 license.

System requirements

Windows, Linux or MacOS operating system. May also work on other operating systems with Java support Java runtime environment version 1.6 or higher. Get it from http://www.java.com

Installation

Download the application package, unzip it to any directory where you have write access (such as Downloads, My Documents etc.)

Removal

This application does not write anything to other directories except the one it was installed to. To remove the application just remove this directory.

Launching the application

Open the application folder (JPaliReader) with Windows Explorer or any other file manager.

if you are using Windows, click on launch.bat file if you are using Linux set "executable" attribute on launch.sh file then run launch.sh (i don't have MacOS, but the launch process seems to be similar to that on Linux)

It might take several seconds for the application to launch especially if you opened many books on previous start.

Usage

Main window

Main window has a toolbar on the top and the book display area. The toolbar can be used to perform various operations such as opening books and exiting applications. There is also a divider in the book display area that separates two panes you can open books in.

Opening books

Click "Open book" toolbar button. This will open a dialog window with 5 tabs on it. You can choose a pane in which the book will be opened by selecting it in the list on right of "OK" button. This allows you to open two different books or the same book and view it on the same screen to compare passages.

1. "Contents" tab This tab presents the entire book collection in a tree view fashion. You can browse the tree by expanding nodes to find what you want. Then select the desired item and click "OK".

2. "Search names" tab You can use this tab to find suttas, vaggas, nipatas etc. by name. Enter a name (or a part of it) into the text box, then click Find. You can enter special Pali characters by using dropdown list next to the text box. You can also search ignoring Pali diacritics.

3. "PTS page" tab This tab allows you to go directly to a PTS page in a book. First you must select a book, then volume, then type a page number. Click OK. This will open the book on the desired page. Pages are marked with [P] sign. Put your mouse cursor over it to see the page number.

4. "Bookmarks" tab This tab contains your bookmarks. You can jump to a bookmark by selecting it in the list and clicking OK. You can also rename a bookmark or delete it if desired.

5. "History" tab This tab keeps a list of closed books. You can reopen a book by selecting it and clicking OK. Book operations

Most of the functions are now available from the context menu. Right-click anywhere on the book to show it.

Finding words in the dictionary

To look up a word select it with a mouse then right-click on selection and choose "dictionary lookup" from the context menu. This will show the dictionary panel. The search tries to find the best match ("auto" mode). You can also manually edit the word and click Find to search again.

Copying text to the clipboard

Select the text, then right-click on selection and choose "copy" from the context menu.

Book navigation

Right-click on the book surface then choose "Go to..." from the context menu. This will open a dialog window you can use to jump to another section (sutta, vagga) etc. within the current book or PTS page.

Creating bookmarks

You can bookmark the current view position in the open book. To do this, right-click on the book surface then choose "Add bookmark". This will open a dialog window where you can enter a name for the bookmark (or agree with the default) and click OK.

Searching text in the current book

Right-click on the book surface then choose "search in this book". This will open a dialog window where you can enter the text to search for, then click Find. This will highlight all the matches and you can use navigation buttons to jump between them.

Disabling text formatting

Some books (especially post-canonical and commentaries) have formatting errors. This is when large portions of text are displayed in bold or have similar formatting errors. This function allows disabling certain formatting elements on a per-book basis. If you see formatting errors in the current book, right-click on the book surface then choose "text formatting...". This will open a dialog window where you can clear the checkboxes to disable formatting as needed.

Finding the current book location

Hover the mouse pointer over the book tab to see this.

Closing books

To close a book click on the black cross on the book tab. A list of closed books is maintained on the "history" tab of the "open book" dialog.

Searching the tipitaka

Click "search the tipitaka" toolbar button. Type (or paste) search text in the text box, then click Search. If this is the first time you use the search facility, the application will ask for creating a search index. This will take several minutes and requires about 100MB of disk space. If your search was successful, you will see a list of books in the left pane. Click on a book name to display its contents in the right pane. All the matches will be highlighted and you can use navigation buttons to jump between them. You can also choose to ignore pali diacritics, but this will work for one-word queries only. The search is performed in the entire book collection by default. If you want to search within a certain book collection, you can select it from the dropdown right to the "search" button. If you want to open a book from the left pane in a new window, double-click on it.

Searching the Pali-English Dictionary

You can use the "search tipitaka" window to search within the Pali-English dictionary. Enter a search word then select <Pali-English dictionary> from the list right to Search button. Searching is similar to that in the Tipitaka and requires a separate index to be built.

Editing the dictionary

You can edit the dictionary used to look up words from the book pane. Right-click on a word in the list then choose Edit in context menu. This will open a dialog box. You can also add and delete words from the dictionary using the same context menu.

Closing the application

To close the application click Exit toolbar button. The application will remember all the currently open books and will restore their view positions on the next start-up. If you have many books open it may take some time for the application to launch next time.