Re: The future of learnsanskrit.org

[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

+ sanskrit-programmers fyi

Wish you good speed, aruNa!

2016-05-11 12:45 GMT-07:00 learnsanskrit.org <questions...@gmail.com>:

Dear friends, well-wishers, and anyone who wanted to be notified for updates to learnsanskrit.org:

Thanks to learnsanskrit.org, I've had the pleasure of knowing all of you. Sanskrit has been one of the great joys of my life, and it has been an immense privilege to have shared some of that joy with you.

It's old news by now that I've wanted to update the site for quite some time. In the interest of tying up loose ends, I thought I would bring some finality to that subject.

Simply put, it's highly unlikely that I'll find the time to finish the site properly. The level of work required is too much for me at this stage in my life, and I don't think I can do it alone.

But I think we can do it, together.

Lately I've spent all my free time thinking about about what the perfect textbook would look like. It would be beautifully typeset, so that it was a pleasure to read on every device. It would be fantastically easy for anyone to edit, so that it would grow better and better every day. It would be effortless to ask questions, right on the text itself. It would be interactive to a degree impossible for ink and paper. It would extend from simple lessons to total mastery. And it would be surrounded by a community, a real place to share and spread knowledge.

And if it could be this for Sanskrit, why not Greek or Latin or Japanese? Why not yoga, or photography, or math, anything a person could learn?

This is my dream. I don't know if it's possible or not, but I'm committed to working on it until I have an answer.

In that spirit, a friend and I have created a first step in this direction. We're calling it Nell, the name of a fictional character who discovers a perfect textbook. Our first project is to create the best guide in the world for learning Sanskrit. And along the way, we'll refine the website itself so that anyone can create something even better.

All great things have small beginnings, and Nell is no different. But we're working on it full time, so it will improve rapidly in the days ahead.

If you're not interested, I won't send you any more emails about this. But if you are, come help us build the future:

http://www.asknell.com/akp/sanskrit

 (And let me know so we can add you to our mailing list!)

Yours,

Arun Prasad

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Vishvas /विश्वासः