ITRANS Song Book FAQ
Anurag Shankar
Last-modified: 1996/06/05
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* THE ITRANS SONG BOOK LIST OF FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS x
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Welcome to the list of frequently asked questions (FAQ, often pronounced
to rhyme with "back") about the ITRANS Song Book (ISB hereafter). Because
these questions are asked often by casual as well as experienced ISB users,
please read this FAQ carefully before posting a message to the newsgroups
or sending out email. Chances are that you will find a quick answer to
your question(s) right here. If not, see answers to questions 6.3, 7.10,
and 7.11 below which tell you how to seek help from volunteers. (Keep in
mind the fact that they really are just volunteers and do not have to
answer you at all, so be considerate.)
The FAQs are organized as follows: A list (divided into logical sublists)
is provided first to search quickly for a specific question. The actual
answers then follow.
Every attempt has been made to make the plaintext (ASCII) version of the
FAQ hypertext-ish (cross references are given wherever possible). Of course,
you could just connect to the hypertext version via the web (see 1.1).
Here is the master list of FAQs:
1. Introduction:
1.1 Where can I get the most recent/hypertext version of this FAQ?
1.2 What is the ITRANS Song Book (ISB)?
1.3 What is ITRANS?
1.4 What is the current version of the Song Book?
1.5 What does the ISB contain?
1.6 What are "pstats"?
1.7 Can I "hear" the files in the ISB?
1.8 What can one "do" with the ISB?
1.9 Who "owns" the ISB?
1.10 Does the ISB cost anything?
1.11 What is the history behind the ISB?
1.12 What the the future of the ISB?
1.13 What is RMIM?
2. Accessing the ISB:
2.1 How do I access the ISB?
2.2 What all do I need on my machine to see the song in hindi/marathi/...?
2.3 Is there a way to access the ISB even if I don't have a graphical
WWW browser such as Netscape?
2.4 Is there a way to access the ISB without the WWW?
2.5 Is there a way to access the ISB via email?
2.6 Can I grab individual songs from the ISB and how?
2.7 Where can I get the lyrics of songs not in the ISB?
2.8 How do I access RMIM via email?
2.9 What are the .s, .ps, .gif, or .itx files?
2.10 Can I convert the .s, .itx, .gif, or .ps files to .au or .wav format?
2.11 How do I print ISB documents in their native script?
3. Releases:
3.1 When and how are releases made?
3.2 What is added in each new release?
3.3 What was added in the last release?
4. Legalese:
4.1 Isn't providing song lyrics (copyrighted material) freely illegal?
4.2 Is the ISB itself copyrighted?
4.3 Can I legally provide audio files of original songs via the web?
5. ITRANS and the ISB Song Encoding Scheme:
5.1 What is (and what isn't) ITRANS?
5.2 Is ITRANS part of the ISB?
5.3 Where can I get ITRANS?
5.4 What is the scheme followed in "encoding" songs in the ISB?
5.5 What is "transliteration"?
5.6 How do I read the songs encoded in this scheme?
5.7 Where can I get the transliteration scheme?
5.8 Can I transliterate my own songs?
5.9 What is the "frozen ISB format"?
5.10 Are there any tools that can help me in transliterating songs?
5.11 Is it possible to convert the .s files into .ps directly?
6. Administrivia:
6.1 Who is "responsible" for the ISB?
6.2 Where is the ISB central site?
6.3 Who do I contact for help (and what help will/won't be provided)?
6.4 Where do I send new songs/comments/critiques/suggestions?
6.5 What is the recommended format for submitting songs?
6.6 How can I get involved in the ISB project?
6.7 Can/should I help financially?
7. ISB Installation:
7.1 What does "installing ISB on my machine" mean?
7.2 Why should/shouldn't I install ISB on my machine?
7.3 What are the requirements for installing the ISB on my machine?
7.4 Which platforms can I install ISB on?
7.5 Can I do a full install of ISB/ITRANS on a Mac?
7.6 How do I install ITRANS?
7.7 Do I necessarily need ITRANS to make ISB work on my machine?
7.8 Do I necessarily need TeX to make ISB work on my machine?
7.9 How do I install the ISB on my Windows/UNIX box?
7.10 Who do I contact for installation help?
7.11 What kind of installation help can I expect?
8. Finding TeX/LaTeX and PostScript Previewers:
8.1 Why do I need a postscript previewer?
8.2 Where can I get a freeware postscript previewer for
a PC/Mac/UNIX box?
8.3 How do I get the postscript previewer to work with Netscape?
8.4 Where do I get TeX/LaTeX for my PC/UNIX box?
8.5 How difficult is it to install ghostscript or TeX/LaTeX on
my PC/Mac/UNIX box?
9. Credits:
9.1 Who is responsible for this FAQ?
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* Answers to the Frequently Asked Questions about the ITRANS Song Book *
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1. Introduction:
1.1 Where can I get the most recent/hypertext version of this FAQ?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Many sites may have copies of this FAQ. However, the server
chandra.cis.brown.edu is guaranteed to have the most recent
version. The FAQ can be accessed in one of several ways:
a. World Wide Web access:
Point your web browser to the URL
http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/hyperFAQ/
or to
http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/isongs/hyperFAQ/
for a hypertext version of the FAQ. Users of Netscape version 2.0
will see a different look and feel than those with previous
versions (or with browsers not supporting the FRAMES tag).
b. Anonymous FTP access:
Connect to chandra.cis.brown.edu or roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu and
get the plaintext (ASCII) file pub/isongs/isbFAQ.txt (don't confuse
it with the file miniFAQ.txt which is a more concise version of
the FAQ).
1.2 What is the ITRANS Song Book (ISB)?
----------------------------------------
When you strip it down, the ISB is basically an archive of Indian
documents (poems, film song lyrics, bhajans, shlokas, and ghazals)
in several Indian (and non-Indian) languages (hindi, marathi, sanskrit,
urdu, and english).
The neat (and the different) thing about the ISB is that it lets you
view or print the Indian documents in their native script (if you have
the appropriate software/hardware installed at your end, see 2.2, 2.9).
Also, because the documents are originally stored as plaintext (ASCII)
files, you can at the very least see the song lyrics in Roman letters
(if, for example, you don't have the native language viewing/printing
capabilities).
1.3 What is ITRANS?
--------------------
See 5.1.
1.4 What is the current version of the Song Book?
--------------------------------------------------
The current version (as of 1/1/96) of the ISB is 3.1. It was
released on July 27, 1995. A new version is just about complete
and will add quite a few new hindi songs.
The most recent web version of the ISB is webISB 3.1a. It was
released on February 3, 1996.
To find out what new features were added in these releases, see 3.3.
Note that the webISB maintainer (Anurag Shankar) has dissociated himself
from the non-hindi parts of the ISB due to various reasons. This means
that all subsequent releases of the ISB will be frozen as far as the
non-hindi archives are concerned. Only the hindi songs will be
updated/corrected etc.
1.5 What does the ISB contain?
-------------------------------
ISB 3.1 contains a total of 1440 Indian documents:
* 1299 hindi film songs and ghazals,
* 34 sankskrit documents (Bhagvad Gita, etc),
* 105 marathi songs (with english subtitles!),
* 1 english document (Tagore's gitanjali),
* 1 hindi-urdu document (Ghalib's ghazals),
Note: Be aware that the words "songs" and "documents" are used
interchangeably throughout this FAQ even though not everything in
the ISB can be technically called a song.
1.6 What are "pstats"?
-----------------------
Each hindi song header in the ISB has information about the song
stored in the .s files (see 2.9 for what .s files are). This
information is usually the name of the film which featured
the song, main actors/actresses, singer(s), the music director,
and the lyricist. These are collectively called "pstats".
1.7 Can I "hear" the files in the ISB?
----------------------------------------------
Nope. The ISB is NOT an archive of sound files (& for very good
reasons, see 4.3) so don't expect to "hear" the songs (unless, of
course, you or someone else starts singing the lyrics as you are
reading them :-)
To reiterate, files in the ISB contain the song lyrics and the
lyrics only.
1.8 What can one "do" with the ISB?
------------------------------------
That depends on what you mean by "do". For starters, you can
* Read the song lyrics (the .s files, see 2.9) even if you don't know
how to read the native script (of course, you have to be able to at
least understand the language for them to make any sense),
* View the lyrics of a song in its native script on your computer
screen (see 2.2),
* Download the postscript files of all the songs (or just one song,
see 2.6) and print them on a postscript capable printer in the song's
native script (see 2.11),
* Quickly search the entire hindi song archive via the web for songs
featuring a specific singer, music director, or songs from a
specific film, or songs from movies featuring certain actor/
actresses, etc (see 2.1),
* Install the ISB on your machine (see section 7).
etc etc.
1.9 Who "owns" the ISB?
------------------------
No one really "owns" the ISB, at least in the usual sense of the word.
It is a democratically/cooperatively created entity and could be said
to belong to all users of the internet.
If you are interested in hosting the ISB at your site, you are welcome
to do so. You will need the ITRANS software, the ISB source, and the
assorted utilities described in section 7. You can then set up the site
anyway you like (only minor help can be expected from the current
webISB maintainer <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>).
1.10 Does the ISB cost anything?
--------------------------------
Nope, if you mean money. It is considered to be in the public domain
(see 4.2 though). All you need is internet access (which MAY cost you
some money if you are not at an internetworked college campus or company).
1.11 What is the history behind the ISB?
-----------------------------------------
Avinash Chopde <avi...@acm.org> writes:
"In 1988, I suddenly developed an interest in Indian language scripts.
I soon found why most vendors were peddling raw fonts out there -
direct use of the font makes it very difficult to enter Indic script
text. So I started the development of ITRANS, a freeware (I)ndian
language (TRANS)literation tool, as a front-end for the TeX typesetting
tool. ITRANS is table-driven which makes it easy support nearly every
Indian Language Script.
When it came time to provide some sample documents with the ITRANS
package, I decided to transliterate a few Hindi Film songs (the most
popular Indian documents by far), and include it with the ITRANS package.
Initially, there were 3 songs that were packaged with the ITRANS archive.
Even though I wrote ITRANS, my knowledge of Indian Languages is very
poor. This meant that the songs contained many mistakes. The first
songs were taken off the usenet newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM),
and I remember that Anurag Shankar, who now manages the Song Book,
was around at that time, and even e-mailed me corrections to the
sample songs provided.
As time went on, the activity on rec.music.indian.misc picked up, I
realized that we had a opportunity to create a archive of Indian
Language Documents, starting with Hindi Songs. This archive would
use ITRANS, so would be readable in English on simple ASCII terminals,
and because it used ITRANS, it would also be possible to get the song
printed in the Hindi Script...seeing the lyrics of a song, or the words
of a popular document in the native Indic Script is just something else!
It is so much more comfortable reading Indic Script as opposed to
reading it in English encoding...
So since ITRANS bridged these two worlds, English input and Hindi output,
I started posting notices on RMIM, letting people know that ITRANS
existed, and asked everyone to post songs to that newsgroup using ITRANS
encoding since that would allow us to print the songs in Hindi too.
Of course, things were very slow in the early days, and I had to manually
edit the posts, and convert them to ITRANS transliteration. Though it was
slow going, it was clear to me that it would be quite possible to start
a new project: to create and collect and archive popular documents of
Indian Culture --- starting off with the most popular item, the Hindi
Film Songs!
This is how the ITRANS Song Book then split off ITRANS, and became its
own project. This was sometime around the early 90s. In the early days,
I used to monitor RMIM very closely, save any message that contained
song lyrics and then transliterat it and add it to the Song Book.
Still, even with all my work, it was very slow going, and over a year or
two, I only managed to make the collection only go upto around 200 songs.
But then things started to gain momentum, along with the more wide-spread
use of the usenet newsgroups. More people started to get enthusiastic
about the Song Book, and started contributing transliterated documents.
A project like the Song Book succeeds only because of the contributions
of many, many, individuals, and a record of all the persons who contributed
to a song or document is available in each document in the collection.
Though it would be impossible to list every one who provided major help
for this project, I can single out the first group of people who moved
this Song Book from being a single-person project to a Internet-wide
effort, and the persons who made that transition for this project were:
C. S. Sudarshana Bhat, Venkatasubramanian K Gopalakrishnan,
Satish Subramanian, Ravi Rai, and Anurag Shankar.
Their help marked the beginning of the explosion in the size of the
Song Book collection. From under 200, it went to over 600, and then soon
to 900. The Song Book now also includes a large collection of Marathi and
Sanskrit documents, in addition to the Hindi Film Songs.
This is how it all started, and just when it was getting too big for me
to handle, supporting both ITRANS and the ITRANS Song Book, Anurag Shankar
stepped in, and since 1994, he has been making the ISB more easily accessible
over the Internet by developing WWW tools to make browsing easier. He now
handles the Song Book editing and expansion, and the popularity of this
song book is easily ascertained by the number of hits Anurag's WWW page
gets every day (over a thousand!). Today, Anurag's ITRANS Song Book
collection contains around 1300 songs!"
Anurag Shankar <anr...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> continues:
"While surfing the net one day at the Univ. of Illinois in Urbana
(where I was a grad student at the time) around 1989-90, I came across
this thing called ITRANS (and later to a collection of songs known as
the "ITRANS Song Book"). Being an eternal hacker, I immediately ftp'd
it and decided to install ITRANS on the local unix box so I could create
my own songs and to view the hindi songs on the screen. I contacted
Avinash for help with installation and we ultimately succeeded in getting
it to work.
When I saw the first hindi song on the screen, I was horrified
to see a large number of spelling errors staring back at me
(hindi is my native language, you see). As I looked at the errors
in the second, third, .... songs, man, I just couldn't handle it!
Almost instintively, I began to fix the errors. Days later, when I
realized that I had fixed a good fraction of the archive (I was fixing
them just for myself, really), it occurred to me that I could give
the corrected version back to Avinash for his next release. One thing
led to another, and I soon found myself editing a lot of the old and
new songs (checking and fixing errors) for Avinash (which explains
the origin of a large number of "Editor: Anurag Shankar ..." entries
in the headers). We also hooked up with Ravi Rai at North Dakota State
Univ. who was collecting a lot of the songs from RMIM and transliterating
them. (Oh, and I had moved to Univ. of Arizona and then to Indiana
University in the meantime as an astronomy postdoc). Being busy with
other projects, Avinash suggested sometime in early fall 1994 (right
after he released ISB 2.1) that I take over the ISB coordination efforts
full time, an offer which I found appealing because I enjoyed working
on the ISB so much (I am totally addicted to old hindi film songs
and the net).
While at Indiana, I received a grant from the American Astronomical
Society which allowed me to purchase a Silicon Graphics unix workstation
(which I named chandra). With my very own unix box, I decided
it was time to learn all about serving web documents. I obtained and
installed the NCSA httpd web server on chandra. The ISB immediately
came to mind as something which could REALLY benefit from a migration
to the web. (Besides, it was a damn good pilot project for me to learn
how to populate and run my web server.) I started hacking away and did
my first ISB release (2.12) featuring public web access in September
1994.
As I started developing scripts for automating various administrative
chores, I decided that, since the large number of independent formats
for the pstats (and the lyrics) which existed at the time were too hard
for me to process in scripts, all songs should be converted to a "frozen
format". Natually, this took quite a while as I had to first work with
Avinash and others to agree on a format and then to hack a large perl
script to actually do the difficult conversion. The work was finished
and ISB 3.0 was finally released to the public in late March 1995 (it
featured the frozen song format which I consider to be my major
contribution to the ISB). The web version of the ISB also featured
a searchable song database made possible by this frozen format."
1.12 What is the future of the ISB?
------------------------------------
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> writes:
"The long term future of the ISB is not totally clear, at least to
me. In the short term, however, I have decided to dissociate myself
from all but the hindi version of the ISB. This is largely because I
am not really qualified to deal with the other languages. The ISB may
therefore split into independent entities - a hindi ISB, a marathi ISB,
and so forth. (This should also make each piece much more manageable for
a single individual.) When (and to a certain extent if) this will
happen, I don't know."
1.13 What is RMIM?
-------------------
RMIM stands for the usenet newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc, the parent
newsgroup to the ISB. To learn more about it, read the RMIM FAQ at
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/faq.txt
===========================================================================
2. Accessing the ISB:
2.1 How do I access the ISB?
-----------------------------
(a) World Wide Web (WWW) Access:
By far, the best (and the recommended) way to access the ISB is via
the WWW. All 1440 documents in the ISB (in raw or postscript form,
see 2.9) are available individually via the WWW. The nice thing about
web access is that it is completely hassle free. Because the ISB is
always available via the web, you simply connect when you have a need.
Individual songs can be downloaded directly from your web browser if
you want (see 2.6). You don't have to worry about knowing which files
to download and stuff like that.
There are currently three "official" websites which allow you access.
All three websites are optimized to use Netscape but any browser
(even non-graphical ones such as lynx, see 2.3) should do. Just connect
to one of the URLs below (preferably the site closest to you) and
follow directions.
Site 1 - http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/
This site is the official home of the ISB and is optimized for
Netscape (actually for any browser which can do imagemaps). This
is where you can expect to get the most current version and news
about the ISB.
This site and Site 2, its mirror, allow you to not only access
individual songs, they let you do all kinds of searches. You can
search the hindi song archive by songtitle, film, actor, singer,
music director, or lyricist (or search the body of all the sogns
for a specific keyword). The result of the search produces a
song list where you have a choice to see the song either in its
raw, ASCII form (for which you need nothing except your web
browser) or in hindi (for which you must have a postscript
previewer installed and configured correctly for your web
browser to use to view .ps files, see section 8 for help).
Site 2 - http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/isongs/
This is a mirror of the first site although changes to the
original site may take some time before being propagated.
Site 3 - http://cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/index.html
This site is somewhat different from the first two. It offers
alphabetically sorted index listing all the songs plus presorted
indices of songs sorted by film, singer, actor, music director,
and lyricist. It does not let you do a dynamic search.
(b) Anonymous FTP access:
The entire ISB can be downloaded either in its "source" form
or in a "ready-to-use" form. You should probably read 7.2
before you decide to download and install the ISB source.
The "ready-to-use" version of the ISB comes in two flavors:
The entire postscript archive (which contains postscript files
for all 1299 hindi songs with 100 bunched together in a single
.ps file) or individual postscript files for any of the 1440 ISB
documents. If you have a lot of disk space, you might want to
download the entire postscript archive (which needs about 12 MB)
and then either view the songs on screen or print them out. If not,
you might want to ftp them individually or as you need them.
You can connect to the following FTP sites:
Site 1 - chandra.cis.brown.edu in /pub/isongs
Read the README file for more info. The postscript archive
is in files isongs-3.1_ps_land.tar.gz or isongs-3.1_ps_port.tar.gz
(in UNIX tar + gzipped format) or in is31psl.zip or is31psp.zip
(in UNIX/DOS zip format). The identifiers 'land' or 'port' (or
'psl' or 'psp') refer to landscape or portrait versions.
Site 2 - roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu in /pub/isongs
This site mirrors site 1 so the downloading procedure should be
the same.
Site 3 - ftp.funet.fi in /pub/culture/music/indian/isongs
This site is in Finland and should therefore be used by European
users only.
(c) Electronic Mail: See 2.5.
2.2 What all do I need on my machine to see the song in hindi/marathi/...?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first and foremost requirement is that your machine be connected
to the internet (well, or you should at least have access to a machine
connected to the net). Beyond that, it really depends on whether you
want to see the song on your computer screen or generate a printed
version.
You need a graphical web browser which can natively (meaning in the
main browser window itself) display images in the Compuserve GIF format
(most graphical browsers do) to see songs in their native scripts.
To see the .ps files on your screen (I don't know why you would want
to unless you were a developer), you MUST have a postscript previewer
installed. See section 8 for info on where to get and how to install
a free previewer.
2.3 Is there a way to access the ISB even if I don't have a graphical
WWW browser such as Netscape?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, there is. You can use a text-mode browser (such as Lynx) to
access the ISB via WWW (of course, you won't be able to see the songs
in their native scripts, just in ASCII). You can do this in one of the
two ways:
a. Connect to the usual URLs (http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/ or
http://roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu/isongs/) and click on the
"TEXT-ONLY VERSION" near the beginning, or
b. Connect directly to the text-only URLs, which are
http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/index_to.html
http://www.roblix.ohio-state.edu/isongs/index_to.html
2.4 Is there a way to access the ISB without the WWW?
------------------------------------------------------
Yes, there is, via anonymous FTP and email. Of course, you lose features
such as searches. You can download the entire archive or the individual
plaintext (.s) or postscript (.ps) files via anonymous FTP (see 2.1b for
how) or get individual songs via email (see 2.5 below).
2.5 Is there a way to access the ISB via email?
------------------------------------------------
Yep, there is. Here is an excerpt from the RMIM FAQ:
"c) Lyrics to particular songs in the ISB are also available via email. If
you know how the song you are interested in begins, then send an email
To: pko...@prism.gatech.edu
with
Subject: lyrics:: first few words of the song (the "mukhDaa"," i.e.)
You will receive the song lyrics in ITRANSed format from the automailer
via return mail. This service is provided as part of the RMIM Auto-Mailer,
with Rajiv Sridhar's <ra...@splinter.coe.neu.edu> help."
2.6 Can I grab individual songs from the ISB and how?
------------------------------------------------------
Yes, you can. There are three ways this can be done:
a. Via the Web - Connect to one of the URLs mentioned in
2.1a, find the song you are looking for, then use the
download feature of your web browser (you may have to
figure this out) to download the .s, .gif, or the .ps file
(see 2.9) to your hard disk.
b. Via Anonymous FTP - Determine the song number (or name
of the document) you want, connect to one of the two anonymous
FTP sites mentioned in 2.1b, cd to /pub/isongs/ps and go to
the appropriate subdir (hindi/marathi/english/urdu/sanskrit),
and download the .ps file you want.
Note that you cannot download an individual .s file using
anonymous FTP. (This may change in a future ISB release
though.)
c. Via Electronic Mail - see 2.5.
2.7 Where can I get info about (or lyrics of) songs not in the ISB?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Really, the appropriate place for requests like
* "Can you send me the lyrics of song xyz not in the ISB?",
* "Can you send me the pstats for song xyz?",
* "Where can I find Indian music resource xyz on the net?",
* "Do you have info about the upcoming Indian concert by xyz?",
* "Can I get notes/chords for songs in the ISB?",
* "Can you tell me about Indian musician xyz?",
* "Are there free hindi/xyz fonts out there?",
etc. is the usenet newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM, see 1.13).
You should probably read the RMIM FAQ (see 1.12) first for some
of the questions.
The ISB volunteers are usually not so knowledgeable as to be able
to handle these kinds of requests.
If you do not have access to the RMIM newsgroup, you have the following
options: (a) find someone who does, (b) buy access, or (c) use email
access (read the RMIM FAQ or see 2.8 below).
2.8 How do I access RMIM via email?
------------------------------------
This is excerpted from the RMIM FAQ:
"If your newsreader does not allow you to post articles to newsgroups
like rec.music.indian.misc then you can use the normal emailing
facility to post. Postings can be made by sending mail to one of the
following mail-to-usenet gateways:-
rec.music....@news.demon.co.uk
rec.music....@dispatch.demon.co.uk
rec.music....@bull.com
rec.music....@cass.ma02.bull.com
rec.music....@paris.ics.uci.edu
rec.music....@crs4gw.crs4.it
rec.music....@berlioz.crs4.it
rec.music.indi...@canaima.Berkeley.EDU
Not all gateways support all newsgroups. You may have to try several
to find one that helps you post to rec.music.indian.misc. (Please let
us know which ones worked and which did not.)
In addition, you can cross-post to several newsgroups by adding the
header Newsgroups: with the names of the groups you want to post to
and sending it to mail...@c2.org, or mail...@utopia.hacktic.nl."
2.9 What are the .s, .ps, .gif, or .itx files?
------------------------------------------------
ISB documents come in one of the two "raw" formats: .s or .itx.
The raw form of an ISB document is essentially a plaintext (ASCII) file
(just plain english for you noncomputer types) containing the
transliterated (see 5.5) version of the text/lyrics along with
TeX/ITRANS (see section 5) commands for converting it into a .ps file.
A .ps file is a postscript file, created when a .s or .itx file is
processed through TeX and ITRANS (see section 5). The .ps files
contain code to make the song appear in its native script on
your computer screen (if you have a postscript previewer) or on your
printer (if you have a postscript capable printer).
A .gif file is a postscript file converted to the Compuserve GIF
format (a popular format for images) using public domain utilities.
The .gif files allow you to see a song in its native script within
a graphical web browser window (so you don't need an external browser,
as you do for postscript).
For more details, see section 5.
2.10 Can I convert the .s, .itx, .gif, or .ps files to .au or .wav format?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nope. As questions 1.7 and 2.9 explain, the ISB only contains
the text or lyrics of a song. The .s, .itx, and .ps files simply
DO NOT contain any information about what the song actually sounds
like. This means that .s, .ps, or .itx files CANNOT be converted to
.au or .wav or .mid or whatever.
2.11 How do I print songs in their native script?
--------------------------------------------------
To get a printed version of the document in its native script, you
have two options: (1) just click on "print" in your browser with the
song you want displayed in its native script in the browser window
(printing from the browser must be enabled at your site for this to
work), or (2) you download the .ps file for the song (see 2.6 for how)
and send it to a postscript capable printer. It's really that easy!
===========================================================================
3. Releases:
3.1 When and how are releases made?
-----------------------------------
The ISB project is an ongoing entity. This means that new songs
are being contributed by folks on the internet all the time.
These are collected and stored by ISB volunteers in various
is ready for a new release. Songs are then sent to the central site
(presently Brown Univ.) where they are converted to the frozen song format
(if not already formatted that way), checked for lyrics/pstats errors,
and integrated into the preexisting ISB databases.
The integration process is quite time consuming and is being performed
by exactly one individual at the moment. This makes the releases
appear several months apart.
Some of the new songs which will go into the next release have
been made available on the web by Ravi Rai <rr...@ndsun.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu>
at the URL http://ndsun.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/www/rrai/next-rel.html. Whether
this will continue to happen is unclear as Ravi has graduated and taken
a job elsewhere.
Every new release is announced on the following usenet newsgroups:
alt.culture.kerala
alt.culture.tamil
alt.culture.us.asian-indian
alt.hindu
alt.india.progressive
rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM)
rec.music.indian.classical
soc.culture.indian
soc.culture.indian.delhi
soc.culture.indian.gujarati
soc.culture.indian.info
soc.culture.indian.kerala
soc.culture.indian.marathi
soc.culture.indian.telugu
soc.culture.punjab
soc.religion.hindu
Alternatively, one can access the ISB via the usual means (see 2.1)
and check the version number and date to figure out what the most
current version is at that instant.
3.2 What is added in each new release?
---------------------------------------
Almost certainly new songs, error corrected lyrics, and pstat
corrections/additions, but often also more useful web/anon FTP
features and utilities.
3.3 What was added in the last release?
----------------------------------------
ISB version 3.1 added (to version 3.0) the following:
* 200 new hindi film songs and 3 new sanskrit documents,
* many, many new hindi song stats,
* improved song lyrics,
* improved look and feel of the web release,
* ability to search for a keyword through the bodies of all hindi
songs, and
* a text-only version of the web release so that searches
now work for Lynx users.
The most recent web version of the ISB, namely webISB 3.1a,
added .gif files (which made browsing the songs in their native
scripts very easy) and a hypertext ISB FAQ.
===========================================================================
4. Legalese:
4.1 Isn't providing song lyrics (copyrighted material) freely illegal?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You are damn right, it is.
Hindi film song lyrics (and music) are copyrighted by the producers of
the film (or by some other commercial entity). However, ISB is exempt
because it explicitly states that:
>The ITRANS Song Book archiver or the contributors are not responsible for
>accuracy of the lyrics, song titles, album titles, or specific performers
>of the songs contained herein. All songs are property of the music directors
>or film producers that perform them and/or their record labels. The lyrics
>contained herein can only be used for "private study, scholarship, or
>research."
>
>If anyone makes use of a reprinted song for purposes in excess of "fair
>use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement.
>
>We are not responsible for any misrepresentation of the performers of any
>songs or their respective lyrics. We reserve the right to reprint inaccurate
>lyrics if the song's lyrics were not readily available to the typist.
>
>This collection is for the sheer fun and pleasure of discovering the lyrics
>of some songs, we are not out to rip off any musicians or lyricists or to
>put any words in their mouths.
4.2 Is the ISB itself copyrighted?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, it is copylefted (in the GNU style). You as a user are free
to use the ISB and all that it contains for non-commercial purposes only.
If you provide the ISB to others in any shape, form, or flavor on the
internet or otherwise, you should include the statement we mention in 4.1
(also contained in the file NOTICE in the ISB source) in its unaltered form.
4.3 Can I legally provide audio files of original songs via the web?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is not a ISB FAQ per se but ISB volunteers are asked this question
often enough that it made sense to include it here.
Audio files or original songs can be provided on the internet (or
elsewhere) ONLY IF the person(s) who hold the original copyrights
(usually the producers of the movie, but can be lyricists also) have
given you explicit permission to do so. Otherwise, it violates
international copyright laws and you are liable to be sued.
If you don't have the permission and think that merely removing the
hyperlink to the audio files in case you are caught will get you off
the hook, think again. The best approach is simply not to do it.
===========================================================================
5. ITRANS and the ISB Song Encoding Scheme:
5.1 What is (and what isn't) ITRANS?
-------------------------------------
ITRANS is a public domain software package developed by Avinash Chopde
<avi...@acm.org>. It is essentially a trasliteration (see 5.5) package
which uses Roman letters as input and produces output in a number of Indian
languages (hindi, marathi, sanskrit, bengali, and telugu, but could
in principle include any number of others).
ITRANS does NOT allows you to use Indian fonts in Word/WordPerfect/whatever
under Windows or on a Mac. There are NO truetype fonts here guys.
The current version of ITRANS is 4.04. Avinash has the next version
pretty much ready. Ask him for more details.
5.2 Is ITRANS part of the ISB?
------------------------------
No, ITRANS is a separate and complete piece of software which can be
(and is often) used independently of the ISB.
5.3 Where can I get ITRANS?
---------------------------
You can anonymously ftp ITRANS from chandra.cis.brown.edu (128.148.176.79)
the directory /pub/itrans-4.0. Read the README file for a description.
Remember that ITRANS currently works only under DOS and UNIX.
5.4 What is the scheme followed in "encoding" songs in the ISB?
----------------------------------------------------------------
See 5.6 and 5.8.
5.5 What is "transliteration"?
------------------------------
Transliteration just means that you write the Indian text in the
Roman script. To illustrate it with a simple example, let's say you
wanted to transliterate a popular hindi song such as "mere sapno ki
rani ...". You might write it in Roman script as
mere sapno ki rani kab aegi tu
or
mere sapno ki rani kub aayegi too
or
mere sapno kee ranee kab aaegee too
Unfortunately, a loose approach such as this makes it nearly impossible
to write a program to interpret it. ITRANS uses a standard scheme
according to which the song in question is transliterated as
mere sapano kii raanii kab aaegii tuu
or
mere sapano kI rAnI kab AegI tU
When run through ITRANS, TeX, and dvips, this song can be converted
into devanagari script (hindi).
5.6 How do I read the songs encoded in this scheme?
----------------------------------------------------
Very simply. Just ignore the command codes. Look at the actual song
body in a .s file (a raw hindi song). The song body is contained
after the preamble or header, right after the '#indian' and the '%'.
It should be easily readable such as in the following example:
% ITRANS Song #238
%
\startsong
\stitle{pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa jab pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa}%
\film{Mughal\-e\-Azam}%
\starring{Prithviraj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Madhubala}%
\singer{Lata}%
\music{Naushad}%
\lyrics{Shakeel Badayuni}%
%
% Contributor:
% Transliterator: Venkatasubramanian K Gopalakrishnan (gop...@cs.wisc.edu)
% Credits: C. S. Sudarshana Bhat (cesa...@utacnvx.uta.edu)
% Editor:
%
\printtitle
#indian
%
pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa jab pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa
pyaar kiyaa koii chorii nahii.n kii pyaar kiyaa\threedots
pyaar kiyaa koii chorii nahii.n kii chhup chhup aahe.n bharanaa kyaa
jab pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa
pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa jab pyaar kiyaa to Daranaa kyaa
aaj kahe.nge dil kaa fasaanaa jaan bhii lele chaahe zamaanaa \-2
maut vohii jo duniyaa dekhe
maut vohii jo duniyaa dekhe ghuT ghuT kar yuu.N maranaa kyaa
.
.
.
%
#endindian
\endsong
%
% Send corrections to Anurag Shankar (anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu)
5.7 Where can I get the transliteration scheme?
--------------------------------------------------
A postscript file currently describes the ITRANS transliteration scheme
in detail. It can be accessed
(a) via the web - connect to either URL below:
http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/docs/dvng.ps
http://www.roblix.ohio-state.edu/isongs/docs/dvng.ps
(b) via Anonymous FTP - connect to chandra.cis.brown.edu and
get the file /pub/isongs/dvng.ps (119KB).
You can view the file on-screen if you have a postscript previewer
or print it using a postscript capable printer.
5.8 Can I transliterate my own songs?
-------------------------------------
You surely can. Get the ITRANS transliteration scheme (see 5.6) and
start firing away.
5.9 What is the "frozen ISB format"?
-------------------------------------
5.6 above gives you a flavor of the frozen ISB format. Basically,
the frozen ISB format applies strictly only to the film songs and
ghazals in the ISB. It defines guidelines for how the preamble
(header), how the song body, and the how the postamble (footer)
must appear.
To get details, please refer to the file 'new_song_format' which can
be downloaded from ftp://chandra.cis.brown.edu/pub/isongs or can
be viewed by clicking on 'new, frozen song format' under 'Where do
I get more info?' at the first two ISB websites.
5.10 Are there any tools that can help me in transliterating songs?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sadly, no. There are a few personally hacked together pieces of
awk and perl scripts which are completely unsuitable for general use.
5.11 Is it possible to convert the .s files into .ps directly?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, it is. You need to install ITRANS (see 7.6) first and then
follow directions in the file 'direct_ps.doc' found in the docs
subdirectory in the ISB source, at ftp://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs,
or by clicking on 'direct PS conversion guide' under 'Where do I get
more info?' at the first two ISB websites.
===========================================================================
6. Administrivia:
6.1 Who is "responsible" for the ISB?
--------------------------------------
A lot of people, really. It is an internet-wide project, in the
true global/cooperative spirit. New songs are contributed by
many, many users, who use any one of the methods described in
6.4 below to submit them. The following Volunteers collect the
songs, transliterate them, and store them at their site:
Ravi Rai <rr...@cs.nodak.ndsu.edu>
Rajiv Sridhar <ra...@splinter.coe.neu.edu>
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>
Prince Kohli <pko...@prism.gatech.edu>
The internet-wide ISB effort is currently coordinated by Anurag Shankar
<anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>. He is responsible for collecting all the
songs in a central location, checking for transliteration errors, compiling
databases, converting the songs into postscript, and running a web and
anonymous FTP server on chandra.cis.brown.edu, ISB's current home.
Alternate access has been provided courtsey of Sridhar Natarajan
<sri...@roblix.eng.ohio-state.edu> (WWW and anon FTP), Navin Kabra
<na...@cs.wisc.edu> (WWW), and Juhana Kouhia <jk8...@cs.tut.fi>
(anon FTP).
Past releases of the ISB have benefited from help by many people:
Anurag Acharya <anurag....@cs.cmu.edu>
Arati Deo <a...@hnc.com>
R. Gopalakrishnan <gopa...@cis.udel.edu>
Preetham Gopalaswamy <pree...@eng.umd.edu>
Shripad Lale <la...@cent.gud.siemens.co.at>
Ravi Rai <rr...@isc.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu>
Satish Subramanian <subr...@cs.umn.edu>
Mani Upadhyaya <ma...@eng.utoledo.edu>
Vivek Vohra <vi...@che.rochester.edu>
Apologies in advance in case someone has been left out.
6.2 Where is the ISB central site?
------------------------------------------------------
The ISB's current "home" is a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation
located in the Computing and Information Services department
at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. This box is
the personal property of Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>.
Unfortunately, this machine is not under a maintenance contract
due to lack of funds. If one of the disks that ISB currently
resides on or the machine dies for any reason, Anurag cannot replace
it. (The ISB will then have to be migrated somewhere else.)
6.3 Who do I contact for help (and what help will/won't be provided)?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> for song errors
(lyrics, pstats), webISB issues, ISB installation on unix boxes,
issues relating to this FAQ, requests to add your indian music
website URL to the ISB webpage,
Avinash Chopde <avi...@acm.org> for ITRANS questions, ITRANS
installation on PC/unix boxes,
Prince Kohli <pko...@prism.gatech.edu> for issues relating to the
rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM) newsgroup or the RMIM FAQ,
Help CANNOT be provided for requests to
(a) send you lyrics of songs not in the ISB (see 2.7),
(b) send you audio files of songs or tell you where to find them
on the web (see 4.3),
(c) give you missing pstats (see 2.7),
(d) advertise your commercial product on the ISB webpage,
(e) "Could you please add song xyz to the ISB?" without an
attached song xyz,
(f) "Can you add punjabi/tamil/oriya/kannada/... songs to the ISB?",
etc.
6.4 Where do I send new songs/comments/critiques/suggestions?
--------------------------------------------------------------
New songs can be
(a) sent to Prince Kohli's auto-archiving facility. Just email
the song to pko...@prism.gatech.edu with 'itrans song' as the
subject.
(b) posted to rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM) newsgroup,
(c) emailed to any of the following:
Rajiv Sridhar <ra...@splinter.coe.neu.edu>
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>
Comments/critiques/suggestions can be sent to
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>
6.5 What is the recommended format for submitting songs?
---------------------------------------------------------
Ideally, the songs should be in the "frozen format" (see 5.9).
However, the reality is that most people cannot be expected or bothered
to do the correct ITRANS transliteration. They simply write down the
song in their own format (but still using Roman letters, of course).
Just send it in to the appropriate place (see 6.4) so long as it
reads more or less ok.
6.6 How can I get involved in the ISB project?
-----------------------------------------------
Ah, in so many ways. Get in touch with the ISB coordinator,
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> for a list of possible
things you could do for the ISB or go the ISB websites and click on
"How do I become a volunteer?".
6.7 Can/should I help financially?
----------------------------------
Oh, most certainly. You can read the ISB NEWS on the ISB homepage
to see why.
===========================================================================
7. ISB Installation:
7.1 What does "installing the ISB on my machine" mean?
-------------------------------------------------------
This is an extremely good question. There really are several ways
you can "install" the ISB on your machine:
(a) An ASCII-Archive-Only Install
This involves transferring the ISB source to your machine,
unpacking it, and keeping only the the raw ASCII (.s or .itx)
files on your hard disk. You can then see the ISB documents
in their transliterated, raw form using your favorite text
editor (you don't get to see or print the documents in their
native scripts).
This is the most painless (and diskspace thrifty) way of
"installing" the ISB on your hard disk, requiring roughly
3 MB. You do not have to install TeX/LaTeX, ITRANS,
or dvips.
(b) A Postscript-Archive-Only Install
In this install, you grab the entire postscript archive and
unpack it on your machine (which will put all the .ps files
on your hard disk). You can now either view them on screen
if you have a postscript previewer or print one or more of
them (if you have a postscript capable printer).
This install does not give you the ability to create your
own postscript files. It requires roughly 12 MB of disk
space. You do not have to install the ISB source, TeX/LaTeX,
ITRANS, or dvips.
(c) A Full Install
A full install means that, once properly installed, you have
the ability to start with a raw ISB file (a .s or a .itx file,
see 2.7) and process it via TeX/LaTeX + ITRANS + dvips
to generate a postscript (.ps) file.
See 7.3 below for detailed requirements for each.
7.2 Why should/shouldn't I install ISB on my machine?
------------------------------------------------------
There are many good reasons why you shouldn't worry about a full
ISB install on your machine. Here is a short list:
(a) disk space
(b) your time
(c) your computer literacy
(d) headache(s)
There is only one good reason to do a full install. It gives you
the ability to create your own postscript files. You can transliterate
whatever you want and then convert it to postscript (and view or print it).
Full installs are recommended only for ISB transliterator volunteers
or for those who know a good bit about their computer.
7.3 What are the requirements for installing the ISB on my machine?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A bare-bones ISB installation, the ASCII-archive-only installation
(see 7.1) requires
* A hardware platform of the types mentioned in 7.3 below
* free disk space (about 3 MB for the entire ISB)
* appropriate unpacking software (PKUNZIP or gunzip)
A postscript-archive-only installation (see 7.1) requires
* A hardware platform of the types mentioned in 7.3 below
* free disk space (about 12 MB for the entire ISB)
* appropriate unpacking software (PKUNZIP or gunzip)
Typical full ISB installs (see 7.1) need, in addition,
* TeX/LaTeX installation
* ITRANS installation
* a DVI to PS converter (dvips) installation
* a lot more disk space (about 20 MB to recreate the entire ISB)
* lot of free time
* a strong will to succeed
7.4 Which platforms can I install ISB on?
------------------------------------------
* IBM PC and compatibles running DOS/Windows
* Apple Macintoshes (ascii- or postscript-archive-only installs only)
* UNIX platforms (running AIX, Solaris, SunOS, Irix, HP-UX, OSF, Linux)
7.5 Can I do a full install of ISB/ITRANS on a Mac?
----------------------------------------------------
No. There is currently no easy way to do a full install on a Mac.
Although you can install TeX/LaTeX, you cannot install ITRANS on a
Mac without great difficulty. Avinash Chopde, the author of ITRANS,
writes:
"If anyone wants to try to do it, they must have TeX (OzTex)
installed on the Mac, must have access to a Compiler and know enough
about that compiler and ITRANS to port the UNIX C code to the Mac.
I can't help much with any of these steps."
You can still download individual postscript (.ps) or ASCII (.s, .itx)
song files (see 2.6 for how) or do ascii-archive-only or postscript-
archive-only installs (see 7.1). You can then view the .s files
(.ps files if you have a postscript previewer installed, see section
8).
7.6 How do I install ITRANS?
-----------------------------
Get ITRANS first (see 5.3). Use the install files 'install.pc' or
'install.unx' which come with the ITRANS source. If you have difficulty
with installation, see 7.10 below.
Please realize that installing ITRANS on a UNIX box means actually
compiling the source. You have to have a c compiler and some familiarity
with makefiles and UNIX software installation in general.
The DOS version of ITRANS comes precompiled.
7.7 Do I necessarily need ITRANS to make ISB work on my machine?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
No. You can still do an ASCII- or postscript-archive-only installs
(See 7.1).
7.8 Do I necessarily need TeX to make ISB work on my machine?
--------------------------------------------------------------
No. You can still do an ASCII- or postscript-archive-only installs
(See 7.1).
7.9 How do I install the ISB on my Windows/UNIX box?
-----------------------------------------------------
For UNIX installs, go grab the file 'install.unix' on the anonymous
FTP server chandra.cis.brown.edu in /pub/isongs or connect to the main
ISB website http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/ and click on
'installation guide' under 'How do I get more info?'.
For PC/Windows installs, use the files which come with the ISB source
(though they may not be much help). Someone really needs to write a
installation guide.
7.10 Who do I contact for installation help?
-------------------------------------------
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> (for UNIX ISB installs)
Avinash Chopde <avi...@acm.org> (for UNIX/DOS ISB or ITRANS installs)
7.11 What kind of installation help can I expect?
--------------------------------------------------
If you are a total computer nerd and are trying to do a full ISB
install, don't expect a lot of help from the volunteers. Find a local
guru first. Have him/her get in touch in case of problems.
If you do know your way around software installations on your
specific box, you can expect a fair bit of help from the people
listed in 7.10.
===========================================================================
8. Finding TeX/LaTeX and PostScript Previewers:
8.1 Why do I need a postscript previewer?
------------------------------------------
You don't really, at least not anymore. However, if you are a ISB
volunteer or developer, you might want to view the documents in their
native scripts (contained in the .ps files, see 2.9) on your computer
screen. This can be done best with a postscript previewer.
8.2 Where can I get a free postscript previewer for
Windows/Mac/Xwindows?
----------------------------------------------------
(NOTE: The suggestions below for downloading may be incomplete. Use them
along with README and other help files at the FTP site.)
The most popular postscript previewer you can get for free is called
ghostscript. It is available for Windows 3.x, Mac, and Xwindows (UNIX).
Use anonymous ftp to
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/pub/ghost
and get the ghostscript FAQ file gsfaq.txt. It will tell you more
about what ghostscript is, etc.
For PC/Windows 3.x:
-------------------
Download the Aladdin version of ghostscript so you can also use
gsview, a Windows utility which can be configured as a postscript
previewer. Here is what you need to download:
From /pub/ghost/aladdin:
gs351dos.zip
gs351win.zip
From /pub/ghost/rjl:
gsview133b.zip
For Mac:
--------
The Mac version of ghostscript is on ftp.cs.wisc.edu in the directory
/pub/ghost/aladdin/mac.
For UNIX:
---------
Files to download are:
From /pub/ghost/aladdin:
ghostscript-3.51.tar.gz
ghostscript-fonts-std-3.51.tar.gz
From /pub/ghost/gnu:
ghostscript-2.6.2.tar.gz
ghostscript-fonts-2.6.2.tar.gz
precompiled binaries are in the directories /pub/ghost/gnu/ghostview-exe
and /pub/ghost/gnu/ghostscript-exe.
8.3 How do I get the postscript previewer to work with Netscape?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(This is largely unnecessary due to the availability of .gif files
directly on the web. However, since .ps files are still available,
it makes sense to leave this FAQ in.)
Get a recent version of Netscape (version 1.22 or later for PC/Mac,
version 1.12 or later for UNIX) first. Getting ghostscript to work
then simply means setting up a helper application so Netscape fires
up ghostscript whenever it sees a postscript file.
On a PC/Mac:
a) Click open the "Options" menu. Choose "Preferences".
b) Choose "Helper Apps" submenu.
c) Scroll down until you find "application/postscript" and highlight it.
d) Under "Action", click on "Launch the Application:".
e) Click on "Browse" and once there, tell it where the gsview
binary is located and choose "OK".
This should fire up ghostscript whenever you click on a link which
points to a postscript file.
On UNIX:
Edit the file /usr/local/lib/netscape/mailcap (or $HOME/.mailcap)
and add the line (look for it first to make sure it isn't set to
something else):
application/postscript; /usr/local/bin/ghostview %s; test=test -n "$DISPLAY"
Change /usr/local/bin/ghostview to wherever you choose to install
the ghostview binary.
8.4 Where do I get TeX/LaTeX for my PC/UNIX box?
-------------------------------------------------
TeX/LaTeX is available for PCs, UNIX, (and Mac, but it doesn't do
you any good because ITRANS doesn't work on Mac, see 7.5). It can
be obtained from one of the CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network)
sites. Find the site closest to you from the list below:
ftp.dante.de (Germany) in /tex-archive
ftp.shsu.edu (Texas, USA) in /tex-archive
ftp.tex.ac.uk (England) in /tex-archive
and read the help files there to figure out what you need, etc.
Usually, these sites also have the DVI to postscript converter (dvips)
as well.
Just be aware that installing TeX/LaTeX is an involved task.
8.5 How difficult is it to install Ghostscript or TeX/LaTeX on
my PC/Mac/UNIX box?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's a highly subjective question now, isn't it? However,
since it is frequently asked, an answer will be attempted.
Installing ghostscript should not be too difficult. You will need
the ghostscript source/binaries as well as the ghostscript fonts in
order to get it to work.
TeX/LaTeX is another story altogether. It is a big package and will
require patience and care to install.
Again, if you are happy just to use the .ps files in the ISB,
limit yourself to installing ghostscript to allow you to view
them on-screen.
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9. Credits:
9.1 Who is responsible for this FAQ?
-----------------------------------------------------
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu> is responsible for
composing this FAQ. This means that you can bug him if you think something
is missing/incorrect. The following people helped define the questions
in this FAQ:
Satish Subramanian <subr...@cs.umn.edu>
Navin Kabra <na...@cs.wisc.edu>
Some of the information included here came from the FAQ for the usenet
newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc (known popularly as RMIM). The RMIM
FAQ is posted periodically to RMIM, but can also be accessed via the
web (see 1.13 for the URL).
The following (listed alphabetically) provided help at various stages
(and in varying forms) of the FAQ:
Ravi Rai <rr...@cs.nodak.ndsu.edu>
Piyush Srivastav <psri...@unlinfo.unl.edu>
Readers of the rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM) newsgroup
Anurag Shankar
I should add that this is the latest version of the ISB FAQ. It supercedes
the hypertext version on the web at the URL
http://chandra.cis.brown.edu/isongs/hyperFAQ/
until such a time when I have time to update it.
Anurag Shankar <anu...@chandra.cis.brown.edu>
ITRANS Song Book Project Coordinator