OnlineBook

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What is an eBook Wiki

A fully referenced and hyperlinked book, that allows readers to gain a seamless understanding of various concepts in it.

What kind of eBooks

Specifically eBooks associated with Hinduism, i.e. the Vedas, Upanisads, Vedanta, Ramayana & MahaBharata?

Availability of these eBooks

For an understanding of the size and nature of the eBooks please see http://www.sacred-texts.com I am working in close conjuction with sacred-texts to try and wiki-fy the Hinduism related books. Currently the *Complete Ramayana*, *The Compelete Mahabharata* and the Vedanta-Sutras are being proofed at Distributed Proofreaders http://www.pgdp.net

Suggestions / Ideas / Help

A wiki clearly has the potential of offering value here, designing it for this purpose however requires the insight of wiki-gurus who presumably are reading this and can offer some insight.

Some initial thoughts

. Mark an eText in the appropriate locations say with a tag like {file wikitag}
. Split the file and create files for each wikitag and automatically populate the wikihome/?/wikitag.Db
. For each eBook build a separate wiki, so a rigvedawiki (rv), chandogyaupanisadwiki(chu)
. Automatically build a list of all sanskrit words and tag them
. Load a Sanskrit dictionary wiki, so each word automatically links to it

   - Issues multiple word spellings Bhasya, Bhaasya, BhAsya?, Bhâsya,
   - Grammar Bhasyam, Advaita Advaitic etc..

Please either note sugeestions on this page or mailto:ajiva_rts@yahoo.com

It seems that this page should be moved to Meatball, eg. MeatBall:OnlineBook (to avoid the e prefix, since it has fallen out of favor a bit). -- AlexSchroeder

As for automatically linking words, take a look at MeatBall:GaGa, which implements something similar. I fear the technical documentation is in German, however. Perhaps you can get an adequate translation via electronic means, or you can pester the authors... ;) -- AlexSchroeder

Thanks, I did look at it but http://devel.linuxwiki.de/gaga/GaGaEn seems to be broken- {Note- It is now working]

How would one handle multiple names for one item is that through redirects.
Given the large no. of entries that each wiki would have -- for e.g. the Sanskrit dictionary could have 160,000 entries and each entry could have multiple spellings -- would that work.

ajiva_rts

Performance is hard to judge. Nobody has tried it before. Even if you use no special parser and just create wiki pages for every item, take a look at BiggestWiki to see in what league you are playing... 160,000 entries will be amongst the biggest wikis. -- AlexSchroeder

Yes, the whole project would be quite large, however unlike wikipedia which has user generated entries, most of these would be initated automatically. 160K are the Sanskrit words that would come form a dictionary that is currently available online. Now, each veda (There are 4) are of a significant size, for e.g. the Rig Veda has about 1,028 hymns each of which would most probably require their own entry. The other Vedas are slightly smaller. The Upanisads, the Vedanta-Sutras, The Mahabharata (over 5000 pages), the Ramayana and these are the source books.

The value a wiki offers to someone studying these texts is that references can be linked-in so a refernce in the Vedanta-Sutras commentary that refers to (Ch. Up. VI, 2, 3) the Chandogya Upanisad Chapter 6, verse 2 line 3 could link directly to it.

there are hunderds of Gods & Goddesses and mythological characters each of which will need an entry. Vishnu has a thousand names and for each name there are commentaries ........

All these texts are currently available in English,in the public domain so this is a real possibilitty.

I have intitiated the effort, I did make a couple of entries on wikipedia and the wiktionary and have been talking with some of their folks. It seemed to me that UseMod had the simplicity and flexibility that might be best suited for this purpose (I could be wrong!) and am designing parts of it, I could use help from wiki-gurus. Thanks ajiva_rts

: You could look into http://www.thetolkienwiki.org/wiki.cgi which has automatic word linking and multiple spelling problems we are working on. -- HelmutLeitner

- The Tolkien wiki clearly has thought of some of the very same issues, I am sending HelmutLeitner a separate email.

- http://devel.linuxwiki.de/gaga/GaGaEn is now back up and I've sent Thomas Waldmann an email Thanks ajiva_rts (BTW:MeatBall does not accept ajiva_rts as a user name)

References