[INDOLOGY] Biblatex and Indian manuscripts

[Dominik Wujastyk]

This message is for colleagues who use TeX, LaTeX and Biblatex
<https://ctan.org/pkg/biblatex>.

I recently did some experiments in using the "biblatex-manuscripts-philology
<https://ctan.org/pkg/biblatex-manuscripts-philology>" (github
<https://github.com/maieul/biblatex-manuscripts-philology>) written by
Maïeul Rouquette (geekographer <http://geekographie.maieul.net/> and author
of the French book "XeLaTeX Applied to the Humanities
<https://www.atramenta.net/books/latex-sciences-humaines/79>").

I find it to be interesting, powerful and pleasing in its clean design.  By
"clean" I mean that it separates information about manuscripts (kept in a
Biblatex database) from formatting and output.

You build up a database of manuscript information using tailored biblatex
fields like "support."  Then you use the features of Biblatex to control
the output formatting. If you know Biblatex, you already know how powerful
the combination of style and \printbibliography options can be. The
manuscript output can be a conspectus siglorum, or a bibliography of
manuscripts sorted by location city, or other choices and criteria.  The
distribution at CTAN includes this demonstration file
<http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/biblatex-contrib/biblatex-manuscripts-philology/documentation/biblatex-manuscripts-philology-example.pdf>
.

Earlier this week, I talked with Maïeul about adding some features for
dealing with Indic manuscripts, and he was immediately responsive and
helpful.  We've updated the package so that it recognizes supports such as
"palm leaf" and "birch bark" as well as scripts like "Devanāgarī" "Śāradā,"
etc.  The changes are documented and already posted at CTAN as version 2.0.

If you work with manuscripts or critical editions (EDMAC, Ledmac,
reledmac), biblatex-manuscripts-philology is worth a look.

Best,
Dominik

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
,

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
,

Department of History and Classics <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
,
University of Alberta, Canada
.

South Asia at the U of A:

sas.ualberta.ca


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