The gāthā is not a syllable-counting meter. It can vary from 30 to 56 syllables. But scribes still counted (and presumably charged) by the syllable. So one would like to have a good way of converting between a the number of verses in a text and the number of syllables represented by those verses. If…
Continue ReadingAs I am learning more about Tamil meter, I have been very interested in Kevin Ryan’s suggestion (Phonology 34.3 [2017]: 581–613) that the metrical units of Tamil verse consist of a strong position and a weak position which are subject to weight-mapping of different strictness. The Tamil metrical tradition doesn’t distinguish between a strong and…
Continue ReadingFor a few of my projects it would be useful to ensure the metrical correctness (which often co-varies with grammatical correctness) of a text that I’ve typed up. I was inspired by Shreevatsa’s metrical analysis tool to come up with a very simple Python script for validating a text that has been composed in Prakrit…
Continue ReadingSince I recently learned that Google’s Cloud Vision API is capable of recognizing text in Sanskrit in the Dēvanāgarī script, I have been excited to see what the possibilities are. Earlier this month Arun posted a comparison of Google OCR and Sanskrit OCR for Sanskrit text, and it looks like Google OCR isn’t bad. I…
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