Disposition of BuddhaDust
Not in order of priority.
I will add to this list as inspired to do so.
The unique advantage of BuddhaDust over other presentations of the Suttas is now its completeness; in the future when these suttas have been copied to other sites, the only unique advantage that the site will retain is the interconnectedness of the whole. One should be able to read a sutta, click to alternative translations and the Pali, click on significant terms to see the Glossology entry and/or the PED, click on references in footnotes to see the referenced document and such other inter-linkage as seems desirable.
■ Turn the tables on Sutta Central and add to the site translations in other languages. Caution! Make sure these are translations from the Pāḷi and not translations of the English translations (Often of those of Bhikkhu Thanissaro).
■ The Pali English Dictionary should be supplemented by incorporating 1. the Chiders' Dictionary of the Pali Language; 2. Trechner's Critical Pali Dictionary; and 3. The various lists of Pali terms in the PTS hard copy where they are not covered by the above. Discussions of these terms found in the hard copy should be added to the dictionary.
■ Adding in the footnotes to the Wisdom Publications Bhikkhu Bodhi suttas. They released these suttas both by list and by copies. The copies had the footnotes stripped out, but I believe it would be permitted to add them back in. As I mentioned in 'The Significance of the PTS translations'; the footnotes in the PTS texts are very informative, give someone who does not want to venture into the commentaries much information about the commentarial view, explains translation terms and deals with almost all the 'points of controversy' that come up in discussion groups and dhamma study. The dialogue in footnotes and translation choices that later translations engage in all begin there. We should have a chance to see this dialogue in its complete form.
■ Suggestion for Glossology. While we still have alive Bhk. Thanissaro and Bhk. Bodhi, it might be interesting to give them an opportunity to go over the entries for them in the Glossology and let them indicate a 'latest preferred translation' to be listed first, say in bold. As I go along, though haphazardly, I am updating my own entry with my preferred translating first. I am also (also haphazardly) inserting linked references for variations in translations as I come across them. Maybe, to save these bhikkhus time, just a list of the words for them to annotate.
■ The flora and fauna section. All references to plants and animals mentioned in the suttas should be linked to a page giving information on these plants and animals. A book has been done on this subject, but I do not have an author or title.
■ Individual Books should be compiled for special subjects and the full collection of such books should be listed and available for download from the Files and Downloads page. Some of this sort of book have already been done. Suggestions for others that could be done are:
Healthcare and the Medical Professions;
Politics;
Managing Business and Money Management;
The story of Rahula;
The story of Migara's Mother;
The story of Angulimala;
The story of King Pasanadi;
The story of Gotama through the suttas;
The important topics of the Samyutta Nikaya could be made into separate books including suttas on the same subject from all the other Nikayas.
■ All suttas of each translation and the Pāḷi should be linked to the previous and the next sutta. This can be limited to complete collections of the books of the Kikāyas or can include all versions, with proper indication of incompleteness.
■ At the foot of the main Gallery page there is a list of various persons that could have full entries in the Gallery.
■ Segment the Pāḷi and all the translations. This should be done sentence-by-sentence as is done with the Christian Bible. Segments should have ids and hrefs.
■ Link all citations in the PED to their suttas or translations.
■ Link all the main entries of the Sutta Search index and the Index of Similes to their references.
■ When segmentation reaches its various stages of completion, Sutta Search and the Index of Similes should be linked more closely to the subject referenced.
■ The What's New? OBLOG should be removed to the archives and a new What's New? page either a blog or just giving information as to what is new should be started.
■ The current Forum subjects should be removed and integrated with the Archives. I see no way that a new Forum could be started. The closest thing to a new Forum that could be helpful would be a person who would answer questions by giving site-specific references. Otherwise, aside from useless posts, the site will soon be dominated by those of other views. This is not something I would like to see and will result in misdirection.
■ The current Webmaster page, the dedication page, and the history of the site pages should be moved to the archives.
■ The contact should be changed.
■ A proper index should be created for all pages of the site.
■ A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms should be created. Set up in the same way as the PED, that is, with ids and hrefs such that the terms can be linked to and from within. It should have the usual abbreviations and a definition and one or more examples.
■ Links to Glossology terms from within the PED and from the Glossology term to the term in the PED.
■ A Dictionary of Pāḷi Roots. Again, set up like the PED so that users can insert links where they are interested.
■ Words in the PED should each have a section preceding the etymology that gives the break-up of the word according to the Dictionary of Pāḷi Roots.
■ Words in the PED should each have, as well as the sound files they now have, the international symbols for the correct pronunciation.
■ There is some question as to the correctness of some of the current etymologies; these should be checked and corrected and where possible augmented.
■ The current Glossology pages could be expanded. The idea here is to give the definition of a term as it is found in contexts located in the Four Nikāyas.
■ Many useful and tangential works could be added to the Files and Downloads page. A reading library might be made from the list of works in the frontmatter of this dictionary, and from the Bibliography page.
■ Useless or out-dated pages/comments should be removed or moved to the Archives section.
■ An index similar to and integrated into the Sutta Search index could "easily" be made for the Bhikkhu Thanissaro translations by using the page numbers found in A Handful of Leaves. A similar thing could be done with the Bhikkhu Bodhi translations.
■ There are a few older less well-known translations that should be added to the Sutta Index. I do not recommend more recent translations than those of Bhikkhu Thanissaro. I have read many and none seem to be adding anything to the understanding of the Way or the understanding of the Pāḷi. Most are going in exactly the wrong direction.
■ Well defined or explained additional or alternative definitions of terms in the PED could be added.
■ Citations from the PED, Sutta Search index, and Index of Similes should be checked for accuracy. Some titles of similes could be made more obvious.
■ Main entries in the Sutta Search index should be added for well-attested (me, Bhk. Thanissaro, Bhk. Bodhi) terms and cross linked to the existing PTS terms.
■ Certain terms within the translations (very few, only those which radically change or reverse the meaning) could be given pop-up boxes with links to the PED.
■ All of my translations should be proofread and where positive translations are made for negative opposites, changed to negative terms can be substituted as this is my intent. inconsistent/varying) use of other translated terms should not be changed.
■ Text and translations should be made uniform according to the suggestions found at: Towards a Uniform Style for Pāḷi Texts and Translations ... or in some other way.
■ A smaller version of the PED could be created by eliminating all terms not found in the Four Nikāyas. I believe this would reveal a number of things that would help in determining the origins of Pāḷi, the uniformity of the Dhamma and the authenticity of the suttas.
■ The whole site could be left as it is as an historical artifact. Or ... ahum ... two or more versions of the site could exist together: one the artifact, and any others with as many of these improvements as was considered helpful. It would be acceptable by me if the whole thing were completely abandoned and left to fade away.
