Contacts & info about Visible Mantra

Fonts and Keyboards

This site uses Unicode to display all of the diacritic marks without which Sanskrit and other Indic languages are gibberish. There's lots of information on the net about Unicode but I think the Internet Sacred Texts site has helpful information for the novice. You most likely have Unicode fonts on your computer already (such as Arial Unicode MS, or Lucinda Sans Unicode) but I offer a version of the font I use, Times Ext Roman if you want it (it's a self installing application).

I have created a keyboard map for diacritics if you want it. It's a modified version of the Windows English (United Kingdom) keyboard map. I've made a zip file with the files and some instructions. I now use it on these pages and it saves a lot of time! It also means I can use extended roman characters on Firefox for searching which is fantastic now that there are a number of Unicode Buddhist text resorces.

Questions

I regularly get questions about mantras, siddham and other scripts, and requests to identify images of scripts. I really enjoy this so please send them in. Please try to keep in mind that I'm a Buddhist and I don't know much about Hinduism or Hindu mantras.

Updates

The site is updated erratically and irregularly with major news being posted on the blog. I'm happy to be asked for things to be added.

Tattoos

Many people are keen to get tattoos and want me to provide larger images for this purpose. I'm not really interested in tattoos. But if you do decide to use one of my images for a tattoo please remember that I do make mistakes and that a tattoo is permanent. Do your own research before getting a tattoo! If you want a Tibetan tattoo then I recommend contacting Tashi Mannox. If you want something translated into Sanskrit or written in Devanāgarī then try Sanskrit Translations.

Links

I don't maintain a separate links page. I link to relevant websites in context. For webmasters this is better for your Google rating, for readers you get links relevant to the subject. I'm open to requests to link to your website, but only if it is relevant to the subject matter of Visible Mantra.

Standards and Design

To enhance your viewing pleasure this website is constructed to World Wide Web Consortium standards for HTML (4.01 Transitional) and CSS. Each page is checked using the W3C Markup Validator. This helps to ensure that the pages display as intended and that your browser does not become confused. My code is simple enough that it should display OK on any broswer although some variations are unavoidable because although there are standards, software companies all implement them in different ways! As much as possible I try to allow you see the page the way you like it - screen sizes and fonts should scale OK. The site was originally designed on a 1024x768 screen (quite small by today's standards) but I've gone wide-screen now (1336x768) - it looks OK in either. A tip of the hat to Dharmacārī Sunanda for encouraging me to write user friendly HTML.

I use Unicode encoding (utf-8) throughout which means you can look at Visible Mantra in your favourite Unicode font - though not all fonts include the Tibetan and Devanāgarī Unicode character ranges. I use Times Ext Roman (or sometimes Arial Unicode MS) as my main browser font, with Arial Unicode MS for Devanāgarī, and Tibetan Machine Uni for Tibetan. I use Firefox almost exclusively, but I have seen it in other browsers (including on Mac) and it seems OK.

As the site is almost entirely visual I haven't tried to meet standards for the visually impaired, but all images do have alt tags.

All the HTML is created in Windows Notepad. There is minimal Javascript or Flash, mostly third party stuff like Feedblitz, Facebook and Flickr badges.

I track usage using Google Analytics, and use Google Sitemaps to help ensure the site is indexed effectively.

Of course do contact me if you have problems viewing the site.

I am obligated by the Amazon website to say "Visible Mantra is a participant in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk."