[Advaita-l] help needed on viewing, downloading and converting tiff files from digital library of India

[Ajit Krishnan]

namaste,

> MOST PERSONS ON THIS LIST CAN AFFORD TO BUY THESE BOOKS;

I agree with the thought, especially when it comes to books in
English, or those that are easily available, such as the
sankara-granthavali republished by Samata books. However, when it
comes to the "sanskrity editions" (sanskrit texts and
[sub-]commentaries, with little or no translation), I have a really
hard time locating them for purchase. The DLI and university libraries
are a treasure trove for these texts.

Perhaps some of you would be kind enough to share the names / contact
information for booksellers that carry these kinds of titles. During
my next trip to India, I'm willing to make a special side-trip just
for this.

Examples of such books are "upanishad-bhashyam" published by Mahesh
Research Institute, and pretty much anything advaita previously
published by Nirnaya Sagar Press.

bhavadIyaH,

        ajit


On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 9:04 AM, Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am a great fan of the Digital Library of India and would like as many persons as possible to make use of it. To that end, I am deliberately making this more detailed than is warranted otherwise.
> First, let us understand that with the AlternaTIFF plug in (free download, follow instructions on the web site of the Digital Library of India), we can view all the pages. If you are unable to download the plug in, you can still view each individual page as an image which pops up in a new window.
> The above procedure is cumbersome if one wants an entire book. In fact, it is designed to be so. The idea is not to make books available to be downloaded freely; it is only to make books readable online. This is not due to some painful bureaucrat dreaming up imaginative restrictions: it is to respect copyright laws. The author (except if the project is funded by a public institution) and his estate retains the copyright till 60 years after the death of the author in India. Considering that most books were published only in the twentieth century, and that most authors actually passed away in the latter part of the century, most books have this restriction. There are alternate sites (www.archive.org and www.ulib.org) where books outside the copyright restriction are available as a PDF or a DJVU, but the collection is very limited.
> So, the answer to Sri Ramesh Ramanan's question is: One is not expected to convert the TIFF files into PDF, and the procedure is not straight forward or simple.
> That said, it is not illegal to store the book, or make a PDF if one insists, for one's own use. Here is how to do it.
> Open each page, save the image to a particular folder. Since the images are very nicely named 001.tiff, 002.tiff and so on, this is very convenient. I actually leave it at this stage. Some might want to use a PDF writer (Adobe Acrobat Writer or Professional or some such version) and bind all these images into a PDF. The resultant PDF is bulky enough to discourage indiscriminate sharing but with file sharing services, nothing remains difficult. Therefore, please note:
> MOST PERSONS ON THIS LIST CAN AFFORD TO BUY THESE BOOKS; THE INSTITUTIONS WHICH PUBLISH THEM ARE DOING SOME VERY GOOD WORK AND NEED THE MONEY. FOR MANY REASONS BEYOND THE LAW IT IS PROPER TO BUY THESE BOOKS AND NOT ABUSE THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF INDIA.
> Regards
> Senani
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: RAMESH RAMANAN <rameshramanan at yahoo.co.uk>
>> To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2008 5:10:27 PM
>> Subject: [Advaita-l] help needed on viewing, downloading and converting tiff files from digital library of India
>>
>> Dear all members on the Advaita-vedanta.org Board,
>>   Pranams,
>>
>>   I will be sincerely grateful if someone could guide me on viewing, downloading
>> and converting TIFF files into pdf files from the digital library of India. I
>> found many useful files, but was unable to download or convert them into pdf
>> format. The members can email me at rameshramanan at yahoo.co.uk with their
>> suggestions and advice. Thanks in advance, Ramesh Ramanan.