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Online Interface to ITRANS


  

ITRANS Song Book


[ Song Lyrics, Plays, and Texts, in Indian Scripts ]
 


Song lyrics and plays displayed in English (using ITRANS encoding) and in Devanagari (using dynamic fonts).
   [Devanagari display requires Netscape 4.0+ or IExplorer 4.0+ browsers.]

ISB: Hindi

Hindi film songs, 3000 lyrics.
Song files from: Consolidated ITRANS Song Book.

ISB: Urdu Poetry

Around 1000+ gazals and nazms.
Song files from: Nita's Urdu Poetry Page.

ISB: Marathi

Around 100+ lyrics, Marathi songs.
Song files from: ITRANS Song Book Archive.
Even more marathi songs are available at: Shatataarakaa.

ISB: Plays

Three plays, by Sujit Saraf.
Aath Ghante, Amaa Vasya, and Vande Mataram.

The Main Collections

I do not maintain these archives, the links above are just mirrors of the main collections stored elsewhere. If you wish to add a song or correct some mistakes, please visit the following pages for information or visit the Usenet newsgroup rec.music.indian.misc.




Download Entire ISongs Collection

For those who wish to download the entire ISongs collection (including both the ITRANS English encoded songs, and the Xdvng dynamic font version), I've made available ZIP archives of the http://www.aczone.com/isongs/ folder.

Note that these are huge archives, total size is around 10 MBytes! On a 28.8K modem, it may take more than one hour to download.

ftp://ftp.aczone.com/pub/isongs/ is the main folder where all the archives are stored:
   isongs00.zip [ 200 kbytes] contains a few top level HTML and perl files.
   hindi01.zip [6500 kbytes] contains the hindi lyrics folder.
   marathi00.zip [ 200 kbytes] contains the marathi lyrics folder.
   urdu00.zip [2800 kbytes] contains the urdu ghazals folder.




Technical Information Section

Viewing Dynamic Fonts Text

Viewing the Devanagari (or Gujarati, Bengali, etc) text in the song archives requires Netscape 4.5+ or Internet Explorer 4.0+.

The HTML documents make use of CSS and Dynamic Fonts.

Windows 95 - Install Font Smooter

If you are running on Windows 95 (and not on Windows 98 or NT), then it may be worth installing the font smoother for Windows 95.

Why is the Hindi/Marathi/etc Text so Big?

The lyrics in Devanagari use large scaling to make the text look readable on the computer screen (tested with 800x600 and above) using the Xdvng font! I don't know of any other way of making it look good for most people. The font specification is in a single CSS file (look at the devanagari HTML page source for details), so it may be possible for sites to locally use their own CSS file instead of the one I supply, to reduce (or enlarge!) the text as required.

Testing Dynamic Fonts

These tests are for Unix and Mac, I think this works without problems on Windows - as far as display is concerned. [Cut-n-paste to another application does not work for the dynamic fonts.]

1: Testing - Netscape Dynamic Fonts (PFR) - Test Nestcape

2: Testing - Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0+ Dynamic Fonts (EOT) - Test IE 4+

3: Testing - Both IE and Netscape Dynamic Fonts (EOT & PFR) - Test IE and Netscape

If you try one of the pages, and it does not work, I am afraid I cannot provide any help since I don't know anything about this. I do have received reports of it working on nearly every platform that can run the latest Netscape or Internet Explorer, as of 1999.

If the pages do not work, one fix may be to install the xdvng.ttf font on your PC - Windows only. Save the xdvng.ttf file locally, and Install the font using the Start -> Control Panel -> Fonts -> Install New Font command. Saving the font on your system may also make printing and cut-n-paste work.

Creating Dynamic Fonts

The dynamic fonts are bound to a fixed set of URLs, I created the fonts available in the font directory with a bunch of URLs I knew about, if your URL is included, you can just copy the PFR or EOT file from the above folder to use for HTML documents hosted at your site. More information in the HTML and text files in the font directory.

If your URL is not listed, you will have to create the fonts yourself, using the free Microsoft WEFT tool (for IE support with EOT files), and the trial or full version of the Bitstream WebFont Maker (for Netscape support with PFR files, IE also supported with plugin). Here's a link to a article on dynamic fonts, do a web search to get more information on dynamic fonts.



Online Interface to ITRANS

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Copyright © 2001 Avinash Chopde, avinash@acm.org. All rights reserved.

Page URL: http://www.aczone.com/isongs/