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Sanskrit & Trika Shaivism: Tour - Technical FAQ

Answers to common technical questions

Gabriel Pradīpaka (one of the owners of this website) answers some common technical questions. In case you need more information or help, consult English-Home - Help, please.

1. The main menu does not work for me. What am I to do?
2. I cannot see any Sanskrit character. What is up?
3. Why is Gabriel Pradīpaka not recording many long scriptures and uploading them to the server so that all visitors may learn how to pronounce them properly?
4. The colors of the site do not look very well. Why?
5. Where is there a sitemap?
6. Do you use cookies?

1. The main menu does not work for me. What am I to do?: Your problem might be a browser/OS-related one. For the most part, you probably have JavaScript disabled on your browser. Since we do not have all available browsers, the following instructions to check if JavaScript is enabled or disabled are rather general:

Firefox (based on Mozilla browser): Tools/Options/Content... Now, see if "Enable JavaScript" box is checked. If not so, check it. Also, click on "Advanced..." button and specially check the three first items in there. Restart the browser.
Opera 9+: Tools/Preferences... Now click on the "Advanced" tab, select "Content" and make sure that the box next to "Enable JavaScript" is checked in.
Internet Explorer 6+: Tools/Internet Options.../Security... Now, click on "Custom Level...", and scroll down to "Scripting". There, see if "Active Scripting" is enabled. If not so, enable it, please. Click on the respective "OK" buttons, obviously, to change the configuration, and if any warning comes up, click on "Yes". Restart the browser.
Google Chrome: Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar. Select "Settings". Next, click on "Under the Hood" tab. Click on the "Content settings" button in the "Privacy" section. Now you can configure JavaScript as you wish (enabled for all the website is recommended). Restart the browser.
Safari: Click the Safari menu. Select "Preferences". Click on the "Security" tab. Select the "Enable JavaScript" checkbox. Restart the browser.

And if you cannot solve the problem, this is our e-mail address. Meanwhile use the Sitemap to reach the contents. There is a link to it on the Home Page itself and, in fact, on practically every document of this website.

2. I cannot see any Sanskrit character. What is up?: Did you download and install the Sanskrit 2003 font? If you need more information about fonts, simply go to English-Home - Fonts.

3. Why is Gabriel Pradīpaka not recording many very long scriptures and uploading them to the server so that all visitors may learn how to pronounce them properly?: Sometimes, people, out of sheer ignorance, ask him to do that. Once upon a time he was asked to record the entire Bhagavadgītā (700 stanzas) and upload it to the server. Well, people often ignore a thing about this: the size. In this case, the size does matter, hehe.

Gabriel Pradīpaka records the files with these specifications:

Channels: 2 (stereo)
Bit Rate: 1411 kbps
Audio sample rate: 44.1 kHz (CD quality)

The file generated is really a big one. For example, the size of an average Bhagavadgītā's stanza would be about 3 MB. Well, Gabriel Pradīpaka certainly can upload such a big file to the server (of course, just a very few stanzas), but if he does that the visitors will end up remembering each of the members of his family when trying to download the stuff, hehe. Besides, the web space/bandwidth is limited. As a result, he is bound to compress the file. He uses the following specifications to do it:

Channels: 1 (mono)
Bit Rate: 32 kbps
Audio sample rate: 22 kHz (AM radio quality)

You can see now how enormous the quality reduction has been. The resulting quality is really poor but enough i.e. the pronunciation is clear. He tested many settings and chose the above one because it showed an excellent balance between quality and size.

Now, the file generated after compressing the original one is about 80 kbytes size (as 1,024 kbytes amounts to 1 MB, the compression ratio has been about 40 i.e. the compressed file is 40 times smaller than the original one). Even with this little file, if you consider that Bhagavadgītā consists of 700 stanzas, the calculation is simple:

80 kbytes x 700 = 56,000 kbytes (since 1 MB = 1,024 kbytes, 56,000 kbytes amounts to 54.7 MB)

Because the current size of the entire website is approximately 103 MB (July 2007), to include the Bhagavadgītā in sounds is something almost insane, isn't it? Let alone if one were to include additional big scriptures. Do you see the problem? Besides, more bandwidth would be used by the visitors to download such a large quantity of sounds... and bandwidth is expensive. There are companies that offer free web space, but we do not want our precious sounds to be stored anywhere else. For that reason, it is not possible, for the time being at least, to publish the sounds of Bhagavadgītā or any other similarly big scripture. Granted, it is really uphill to record all those stanzas, but the problem is mainly a technical one.

4. The colors of the site do not look very well. Why?: This website is optimized for 1920x1080+ resolution and 16 bit+ color (i.e. about 65,000 colors or higher). However, it supports lower/higher resolutions as all tables and "div" containers are in percentages and the text is "liquid", i.e. it does not use absolute units such as pixels, cm, etc. but ems and % (relative units), and consequently its size may be made bigger or smaller at will. Regarding colors, if your video card is able to show 65,000 colors, you should not have any problems.

5. Where is there a sitemap?: Here you are a Sitemap. The sitemap is also used by visitors having problems with the main menu. There are links to it on practically each of the documents of this site. There is a complete coherence between the Sitemap, the main menu and this Guided Tour.

6. Do you use cookies?: This question is maybe the most important one of the entire FAQ. It is so important since privacy is vital according to our opinion. As you surely know, cookies are little files to be inserted into a visitor's browser, which allow a website to keep track of him/her. This interesting feature may be used in a good manner or not. Very often, third parties insert cookies into your browser (provided that you have cookies enabled, of course) through ads (advertising banners). As many of those banners are practically everywhere, you are traced by those companies as you move through the Web. A very simple example: you visit the site A and over there an ad inserts cookies into your browser. Well, when you move to a different site, say B, which also contains the same ad, this banner recovers the cookies and knows that you are the same person who was visiting site A, and so on. The process may not be "exactly" like that, but it is a good approximation in order that you may understand it. Very smart, isn't it? What about our privacy policy then? Read them: Privacy and Security statement .

We are clearly stating this because many sites violate the visitors' privacy, specially through third-parties' cookies. Ours is not one of them, be sure.

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