#7/27/95 version (as)

                  A Mini-FAQ for ITRANS Song Book (ISB)

What? You haven't heard of the ITRANS Song Book yet?  Unbelievable!
Well, you are in luck - this ISB mini-FAQ is precisely the remedy for you.

The following information can (or will) also be found in part in the FAQs for 
newsgroups rec.indian.music.misc (RMIM) and soc.culture.indian (SCI).

This mini-FAQ answers the following questions:

1.  What is and what isn't ITRANS?
2.  What is "transliteration"?
3.  What is the ITRANS Song Book?
4.  What is the current release of the Song Book?
5.  Who is currently maintaining the Song Book?
6.  Who can I send new songs/comments/critiques/suggestions to?
7.  How can I get the Song Book?

The ISB project is currently going ahead full steam. Since some of you may 
still not know what in the world it is all about, a monthly mini-ISB-FAQ 
(this file) appears on various india-related newsgroups but especially on
rec.music.indian.misc or RMIM.


1.  What is and what isn't ITRANS?

ITRANS is a software package developed by Avinash Chopde (avinash@acm.org).  It 
is essentially a trasliteration package which uses english (ASCII) input and
produces output in a number of Indian languages (hindi, marathi, sanskrit, 
bengali, and telugu).  The neatest thing about ITRANS of course is that it is 
not only freely available on the net, it is also available for free (which sure 
beats paying $$$ to produce nice output in Indian languages).

ITRANS does NOT allows you to use Indian fonts in Microsoft Word/WordPerfect
/whatever under Windows or on a Mac.  There are NO truetype fonts here guys.
Avinash Chopde (avinash@acm.org), however, sells an excellent WYSIWYG utility 
based on ITRANS which allows you to use ITRANS-style keystrokes in your Windows 
word-processor and see the output (in many indian languages) immediately.



2.  What is "transliteration"?

Transliteration means that you write the Indian text in the roman script 
(english), run it through interpreters (ITRANS, TeX, and dvips in this case) 
to produce a PostScript file, and either preview it on-screen or print it out 
using a PostScript printer.  Obviously, you'd have to know the mapping scheme 
(which is is provided with the ITRANS source) to really use it.  I will give 
a simple example here.  Let's say you want to transliterate a popular song 
such as "mere sapno ki rani ...".  You write it in "ITRANS code" as

   mere sapano.n kii raanii kab aaegii tuu ....

You then run it through ITRANS, TeX, and dvips to produce PostScript output 
in the devanagari script (hindi).


3.  What is the ITRANS Song Book?

Avinash started gathering the lyrics of hindi songs from various people a few
years ago for use with his ITRANS package.  He transliterated many of them to 
produce the early versions of the Song Book.  The current release of the song 
book contains: 

    1299 hindi film songs and ghazals,
    34 sankskrit documents (Bhagvad Gita, Hanuman Chalisa, etc),
    105 marathi songs (with english subtitles!),
    1 english document (Tagore's gitanjali),
    1 hindi-urdu document (Ghalib's ghazals),

i.e. a total of 1440 documents.

Since it is an on-going project, songs are being added daily to the archive.


4. What is the current release of the Song Book?

ITRANS Song Book 3.1, which was released on July 27, 1995.


5. Who is currently maintaining the Song Book?

I (Anurag Shankar) assumed the responsibility of maintaining and upgrading 
the Song Book over a year ago.  I continue to do so, at least for now.
It takes a lot of time and computer resources to keep ISB well and alive, 
so I am not too sure how long I can keep this up.

Hardware which makes ISB possible at my end comes thanks to American 
Astronomical Society, which funded my small (astronomy) research grant in 
1994 (the grant was NOT to allow me to run a web server; it was to do 
astronomy.  My efforts at providing a website for the ISB are entirely my 
own and do NOT conflict with my astronomical mission).  This allowed me to 
purchase a Silicon Graphics Indy R4600PC Unix workstation (known fondly to 
me and to ISB lovers everywhere as chandra).  When disk space got low (I 
only had a 535MB disk, most of which was taken up by the huge Irix operating 
system), I shelled out $900 from my own pocket to add a 1GB hard disk to 
chandra so that ISB and other useful info I provide on the web and via 
anonyomus FTP could find a good home.  Disk space got low again earlier
this year and I am happy to report that contributions from the ISB lovers
everywhere allowed me to purchase a 2.1GB disk (Avinash Chopde contributed
the first $200 (thanks Avinash!).  I noticed, however, that only a small 
fraction - abotu 15 in all - of the people who actually use the ISB made 
contributions).  If any of you out there are rich enough, donations of 
whatever size (prefferably larger than $10) toward the ISB will be highly 
appreciated (send checks to the address listed in my .signature below).

Internet access is provided to me as a courtsey by the Indiana University
astronomy department and the wonderful people in it.  At some point in the 
future, internet access may no longer be free.  I have no idea what will 
then happen to the ISB and zillions of other internet resources I (and you) 
have come to reply upon. 

Please send new songs, critiques/comments/suggestions about the ISB, and
any other feedback you wish to send me at anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu.


6. Who can I send new songs to?

New songs (transliterated or otherwise) can be mailed to the following 
people directly (you can also post them on rec.music.indian.misc):

     Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu)
     Ravi Rai (rrai@isc.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu) 
     Satish Subramanian (subraman@cs.umn.edu)

Another way to send songs is to use Prince Kohli's auto-archiving facility.
Please read the RMIM (rec.music.indian.misc) FAQ (available at Prince's WWW
site http://www.cc.gatech.edu/grads/k/Prince.Kohli/faq.txt) to find out how.


7. How can I get the Song Book?

Aha, finally the most important question of them all!  Well, how you get it 
depends on what you mean by "get" and how much effort you are willing to put 
into "getting" it and into everything which entails.  I would suggest the 
following (depending on how computer savvy you are):

ANONYMOUS FTP ACCESS:

 (a) If you are reasonably computer literate, and have access (and perhaps 
     even the root password, though it isn't needed really) of a Unix box 
     with utlities such as TeX, xdvi, dvitops, and gs installed, you can 
     anonymously ftp the entire songbook source from chandra.astro.indiana.edu 
     (in /pub/isongs) if you are north-america based or from ftp.funet.fi 
     (in /pub/culture/music/indian/isongs) if you are in Europe (if any of you
     in Australia have a place where you can install it, please let me know).  
     There are README files there to help you.  

     The process is same if you have or have access to a DOS PC with TeX, 
     some sort of dvi previewer, and a dvi to ps conversion utility installed.

     You'd have to have ITRANS installed if you really want to be able to 
     convert the sources yourself into PostScript.
    
     Of course, you don't HAVE TO install ITRANS if you don't want to mess 
     with it.  You can then just get the PostScript songs directly (read
     on).
     

 (b) If you want to just print the hindi songs without having to deal with 
     installing ITRANS, TeX, etc., you can do the following:

     I. IF YOU HAVE A UNIX ACCOUNT SOMEWHERE - anonymous ftp to
        chandra.astro.indiana.edu, cd to /pub/isongs, and get one of 
        the following two files (depending on whether you want to print
        songs in landscape mode which takes more pages or the portrait 
        mode):
  
        isongs-3.1_ps_land.tar.gz (songs in landscape mode, approx 1.5MB)
        isongs-3.1_ps_port.tar.gz (songs in portrait mode, approx 1.5MB)

        Once you have them on your Unix box, make a dir for these files
        (say isongs), cd to isongs, and do one of the following (depending
        on which of the two files you ftp'd):

        gunzip -c isongs-3.1_ps_(land or port).tar.gz | tar xvf -

	(OR, if you have GNU tar, you do

        tar -zxvf isongs-3.1_ps.tar.gz or

	(Aren't those GNU people wonderful :-)

     This will create a subdir 'ps' and create the following files in it:

         hindi/hcontent.ps : The table of contents.
         hindi/hindex.ps   : The song index in (english)
                             alphabetical order.               
         hindi/raga.ps     : A list of songs by ragas  
         hindi/(land or port)/h001-099.ps : The first 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h100-199.ps : The second 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h200-299.ps : The third 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h300-399.ps : The fourth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h400-499.ps : The fifth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h500-599.ps : The sixth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h600-699.ps : The seventh 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h700-799.ps : The eight 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h800-899.ps : The ninth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h900-999.ps : The tenth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h1000-1099.ps : The eleventh 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h1100-1199.ps : The twelfth 100 songs.
         hindi/(land or port)/h1200-1299.ps : The last 100 songs.

         english/*.ps   : the english docs.
         marathi/*.ps   : the marathi docs.
         sanskrit/*.ps  : the sanskrit docs.
         urdu/*.ps      : the urdu docs.

     (If you want to see the disk space requirements, see the file
     DISKSPACE.NEEDED in the top level directory or at the chandra anon FTP
     site).

     This distribution contain PostScript files for all 1299 hindi songs as
     well as for the other languages.  All you'd have to do is to print 
     them (find local help on how to do this).  

     BEWARE that you'd be printing in excess of 600 pages if you printed 
     all the .ps files.  The hindi songs archive (h???-???.ps files) 
     alone are 550 (landscape) or 434 (portrait) pages.

    II. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A UNIX ACCOUNT - ftp from your machine (PC, 
        Mac, whatever) to chandra.astro.indiana.edu, cd to pub/isongs/ps,
        and ftp the PostScript files listed above directly.  Of course, this
        will take longer since you'd be transferring ~ 8 Mbytes (instead of
        2.4 Mbytes in the case of the .tar.gz file).  The advantage is that
  	you can transfer only those files you want.

    III. IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THE INTERNET - then how are you reading
        this?  Find someone who does (or buy access).

WWW ACCESS:

      [Note: This is the best way to get songs if you don't want to print them 
      all out every time a new version is released (the whole Song Book is 400-
      550 pages long - depending on whether you are printing it in landscape
      or portrait mode) at present and is still growing!).  Be green and save 
      a tree!]

      All 1299 hindi songs in the ITRANS Song Book are available individually 
      via the World-Wide-Web.  There are currently two sites which allow you
      access.  To get to them, use netscape, mosaic, lynx, viola, or some other 
      WWW browser to connect to one of the following:


      Site 1 - URL: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/isongs (Home of ISB 3.1)

      (This site is optimized for netscape.)

      (This site allows you to do the above, plus it lets you do all kinds
      of searches now.  You can search the hindi song archive by songtitle,
      film, actor, singer, music director, or lyricist.  The results of the
      search produce a song index and you can click on hindi or on ascii to
      see your favorite songs in hindi or english.) 
     
      This site has been made available and is maintained by yours truly, 
      Anurag Shankar (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu).


      Site 2 - URL: http://cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/index.html

      (currently has ISB 3.0.  Navin will make ISB 3.1 available when
      he has time.)

      (You can see here an alphabetically sorted index listing all the songs.  
      You can then click on one of the two icons before the song title to see
      either the english (ASCII) or the hindi (PostScript) version of the song.        Of course, you can also transfer those songs to your local site if you 
      know how to grab them with your WWW browser.)  You can also look at
      presorted indexes by film, singer, lyricist, and music director.

      This site is maintained by Navin Kabra (navin@cs.wisc.edu).  We owe him
      many thanks.

      In order to do this, you have to not only have netscape but also 
      all its friends (or helper applications) installed properly on your 
      PC, Mac, or Unix box (which has to be connected somehow to the internet 
      - either hardwired or via a high-speed modem if you want to see songs 
      in hindi).

Please report errors/comments on how to make this FAQ better to me at
the address below.
--
Anurag Shankar, Visiting Research Associate  (anurag@chandra.astro.indiana.edu)
Astronomy Department, Indiana University               812-855-4838 (work)
Swain West 319, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA            812-855-8725 (fax)
WWW home page: http://chandra.astro.indiana.edu/
