help

four bands: the bar you type at, what there is to read, what transcribing takes, and what leaves.

commands

type a command and press enter. the bar is a command line and it resolves on the server, so everything here works with javascript switched off. a "?" in a search is an ordinary character, never a wildcard.

where you can go

~
leaves congo for digitalpilgrim.tech, the home this corpus sits in — the same place the ~ at the start of every crumb line goes. cd ~ too
cd
back to ~/congo, the three directories the corpus holds. cd / and cd ~/congo name it too
cd transcriptions
who is transcribed here. lyrics and songs name it too, and an artist opens to their albums
cd tarot
the cards. cards too
cd books
the shelf. shelf too
cd glossary
what the words mean. terms too
cd settings
your name and how you sign in — the one page about you rather than the corpus. account too

moving around

cd wanga
a bare name: a card, then an album, then a book, then a song, then a person — the first that answers
cd ..
up one level. from a song that is its album, from an album it is the artist whose it is, and from an artist it is transcriptions
ls
list what is here, without going anywhere. ls ~/congo lists the corpus from anywhere in it
ls tarot
list a directory you are not standing in. every directory above answers, and so does a book, an album or a song by name
ls ~
refuses: ~ is another site, and congo cannot read its directory. it says so and names ls ~/congo
ls -l
the same, with counts. l is shorthand
ls -t
albums newest first, by the release linked to each. -r reverses it, so ls -ltr works
ls -g christian
only the albums holding a word the glossary files under one of its categories

making something new

mkdir a-record
start an album the corpus has no directory for. it lives in the database and reaches the notes through dump
rmdir a-record
remove one. refused if anything has been transcribed in it
rm the-fool
remove a tarot card. refused if anything is written on it. the picture stays
g add ziran - self so
a word the glossary does not have. g add daoist/ziran picks the heading from the bar, and a heading that does not exist yet is typed into the form's "or a new tradition" field
g edit dao
change one: its name, its heading, what it means, and the spellings it is matched by
g rm ziran
remove one. the lyrics are not touched — a mention is derived

opening a song

cat a-door
print a song without leaving for it
v a-door
open a song. vim works too
e a-door
edit a song. bare e edits the one you are reading
ln a-door
the link to send somebody: one song, at an address nobody can guess, and revocable. if it already exists it goes to the clipboard. bare ln is the song you are reading

searching

/wanga
search the corpus. a bare word searches too
grep dao
search, for the fingers that type it
wc
word counts. wc jah for one word

the other pages

g
the glossary. g dao goes straight to a term
?
the uncertainties, scoped to where you are
dump
write every song back out as markdown, outside the container. export works too
help
this page. h works too

arguments match exactly first, then on a prefix, then anywhere -- so v inner reaches the inner- songs. a word that merely starts with a command name is still a search: love, cdr and goobi all search.

commands

keys at the bar

tab
complete as far as the candidates agree, then walk them
tab after -g
the glossary categories, since that is what the flag takes
shift tab
walk them backwards
↑ ↓
the same walk, and enter follows it
/
focus the bar from anywhere on the page
esc
close the list, then hand the page back to the keyboard
` or ctrl k
the palette: the bar, enlarged

a page load leaves the keyboard alone, so space scrolls — / takes the bar and ctrl k opens the palette when you want one

keys at the bar

marks in a lyric

a term
a glossary word. it links to what the glossary says
a guess?
chad is unsure he heard this right

neither marking changes a letter of the line. a "?" is evidence about a sound, not a typo, and it is never stripped or corrected anywhere in this app. a tarot card and a book's notes are written here rather than heard, so they carry the first mark and never the second.

marks in a lyric

transcriptions

the tree

an artist
whose the record is. transcriptions lists them and each opens to their albums — the tree one level down from where it used to be
an album
a directory of the corpus, and the tracklist entirely. nothing here moves a song between two or works out which one it belongs on
a name is taken corpus-wide
an album slug is the whole of its address, so two artists cannot both have a psalms. the second one needs another name
a row
the filename, NN-song-title.md — the same thing a citation is written with
the gaps are real
track numbers are sparse and stay sparse. psalms holds 01 and 08 and nothing between, and nothing is renumbered to close that
[x] · [ ]
with a spotify release linked, the listing is the record's running order marked against what is transcribed here. with none linked it lists the directory and says nothing about what is missing

a song

two windows
the words it uses on the left, and on the right a tab strip: its ? marks, and the links it can be heard and shared at
the gutter
the file's own line numbers, each one a link, so a line has an address to quote back
#L49-L51
a few lines rather than one. shift-click a second number to make one — a sentence here often runs to three lines, and a link to the first of them says nothing about the other two
listen
every place the recording is. the one that embeds is the one the transport at the foot drives
the pencil
above the lyric, and at the end of every transcribed row in a listing. it edits the body and nothing else about the song

a lyric is held byte for byte — trailing spaces, dialect spellings and every ?. the markdown seeded it once and postgres has been the copy that counts ever since.

transcriptions

tarot

what a card is

written, not heard
so a ? on a card is a question mark. nothing marks it, and a card has no uncertainties to work out
a picture beside it
rider–waite–smith, out of wikimedia commons, and kept only where commons itself says public domain
tarot/NN-slug.md
what dump writes. there is no tarot directory in the notes, so that file is the only copy of a card outside the database
lines · terms · picture
the three columns a listing has here. no ? column, because there is nothing on a card to be unsure you heard

the deck beside it

the second window
all 78 of a standard pack, [x] written here and [ ] not. an unwritten card is a real absence rather than a guess
one press
a [ ] row is a button. it starts the card and lands in its editor — the name, the number and the order are already known
rm the-fool
the page that says what would go. refused while anything is written on it
what removing leaves
the picture, and the markdown already exported — so a card that has been dumped comes back on a reseed
tarot

books

what a book is

a pdf on the shelf
a book is here because a file is. the shelf is mounted read-only and nothing in this app writes to it
the notes
what has been written about the book. never the book's own text — nothing here has read a page of one
filed under
traditions, ticked by hand. a filing is somebody saying so, not a count of words
author · published · publisher
what openlibrary and the pdf's own metadata suggest, waiting to be accepted. neither writes a value on its own

reading one

the cover
page one of the pdf, rendered here. no cover means no renderer on this machine rather than an error
cd hermetica
a book by its name, and cd on a person's name reaches everything on the shelf by them
find
the box on the shelf matches a title or an author, and every figure in the row beside it moves with it
the pdf is the owner's
these are somebody else's books on a public host, so the file itself opens for an account and for nobody else
books

the glossary

a term

what it means
and the tradition it comes from, and every line in the corpus that uses it
also:
the other spellings it is matched by — hela selasie for haile selassie i. hand-written, never generated
one glossary
a lyric, a card and a book's notes are all matched against the same words
a mention is derived
so removing a term changes no line of anything. the marks simply stop being drawn

a wrong link asserts a meaning a lyric may not have, which is why a spelling is only ever suggested to chad and never added by the app.

the glossary

searching and counting

searching

/jah
every line holding the word, with the lines around it, because the boundary may be what is wrong
a near miss counts
selassie finds selasie. spelling is half of what is uncertain here
a ? is a character
tune finds tune?, and a ? you type is never a wildcard
what is searched
the lyrics, the cards, and what has been written about a book. not a book's own text

counting

wc
every word in the lyrics and where it is, with how often it is one chad is sure of
wc jah
one word: every line it is in, and the songs it reaches
the lyrics only
cards and book notes are left out. prose about the corpus is a different thing from the corpus
counts, not claims
a number here says a word was used, and nothing about why
searching and counting

uncertainties

every word marked ? in the corpus, in one place, with whatever has been concluded about it. ? in the bar goes there scoped to where you are: from a song it means that song, from an album that album.

the four ways a word can be uncertain

i tune? the wanga
trailing — the word is a phonetic guess at a real vocal
nerve ? fires
bare — a word was heard and not made out at all
?some think it's
leading — an unheard word runs into the next, so the boundary itself is in doubt
with ghosts (goats?)
parenthetical — a competing reading already written down

the letters around a ? are evidence about a sound, not a typo, and nothing in this app strips or corrects one.

what one of them shows

the line
and the two either side, because the word boundary may be what is wrong rather than the word
the same shape
elsewhere in the corpus. the same sound heard three times is worth more than one guess
glossary terms
that sound like it. an unknown word is more often a term from one of the traditions than a mishearing
readings
what has been suggested so far, and why

working one out

suggest
write down a reading and the reason — syllables, stress, a term it might be
resolve with this
pick one. it records the decision and nothing else
reopen
take the decision back

resolving does not touch the lyric. the app records what was concluded and the edit in the file is yours — the same division as everywhere else here, where nothing rewrites a line you did not rewrite.

the list

worst first
the ones nothing is known about, before the ones with a reading
by song
in file order instead, for working through one song
outstanding · resolved
which half of them to look at

a reading survives you editing the line it is about. it is anchored to the line's text and which occurrence of the token it is, not to a line number, because refining the spelling around a ? is the work — if a line moves far enough that the match is uncertain, it is flagged for review and put first rather than quietly dropped.

uncertainties

the editor

ways in

e a-door
open that song for editing
e
edit the one you are reading
the same press, at the end of every transcribed row in a listing and above a lyric

what you are holding

the file itself
trailing spaces, dialect spellings, every ?. nothing here strips or corrects a character of it
the body only
not the title, the track number, or which album it belongs to
the editor

writing

the commands

w
write. the page stays where it is
wq
write and go back to reading it. x works too
q
leave. refused if there is unwritten work
q!
leave and throw away what was typed. Q works too
w!
write over a version saved since this one was opened

worth knowing

the colon
optional. w and :w are the same thing
the buttons
the three beside the line say the same three things, so the editor works with javascript switched off
a changed song
if it was saved by anything else while you had it open, the write is refused rather than quietly winning. w! is how you insist
writing

keys in the buffer

the keys

ctrl s
write, for the hand that reaches for it. the same as w
esc
hand over to the editor's : line
ctrl space
play and pause
ctrl j
back five seconds
ctrl k
forward five seconds
ctrl '
loop the six seconds just heard. again to stop

worth knowing

the cursor
the buffer holds it when the page loads, so you can just type
only in the buffer
everywhere else ctrl k opens the palette, and the transport at the foot is there to be clicked
inside a loop
ctrl j and ctrl k move the whole window instead of seeking, so you walk it onto the word rather than aiming at it
the line below
a press goes somewhere else entirely, and says the time it would land on before you commit to it
the panes beside
the glossary and the uncertainties are as of the last write, not of what is on the screen
keys in the buffer

the player

what it is
congo plays nothing itself. it drives spotify, so spotify has to be running somewhere
where you can connect
inside transcriptions, which is where there is something to play. the shelf, the tarot and the glossary have no track, so they do not offer it
and where the bar follows you
everywhere, once something is playing — looking a word up in the glossary mid-track should not cost you the pause button
one device
an account plays in one place at a time, so starting something here pauses whatever else it was on
a round trip
every command goes to spotify and back, which is why a loop comes round with a small gap in it rather than seamlessly
press, not drag
the line jumps to where you press it. dragging would be silent aiming -- you would hear nothing while you moved
the player

accounts

anyone reads
the lyrics, the cards, what is written about a book, and the glossary. no account, no sign-in
an account writes
a lyric, the glossary, a tarot card, the shelf — and suggests a reading for a word marked ?. it is the same account chad has
and opens a pdf
the one thing a reader without one cannot do, because the books are somebody else's on a public host
an invitation
the only way in. there is no sign-up form and no mail is sent anywhere — a link is handed over, and it claims once

a control you cannot use is not drawn, and the server refuses it either way. hiding a button has never been how anything here is protected.

accounts

sharing a song

ln a-door
a link to one song that anybody holding the address can read. bare ln is the song you are reading
the address is the whole of it
128 bits of it, and no password. deleting the link is what takes it back, and a revoked address answers exactly as one that never existed
one link per song
so publishing is a lyric at a time rather than all or nothing. two links to one song would be two things to revoke
what a stranger sees
the lyric, the words in it, where to hear it, and what a ? means. no header, no bar, and no link to the rest of the corpus — none of it is drawn rather than hidden
sharing a song

dump

dump
writes the whole corpus back out as markdown: every song, every card, what is written about every book, the glossary, and the recordings. export works too
it is the other copy
a card, a book's notes, a suggested reading and the glossary are in the database and nowhere else, so an export is what survives a reset of it
it reads straight back
what it writes is a corpus, in the shape this one was first read in, which is what recovery means here
a download, or a directory
the same three writers pack a tarball on a machine with no notes mounted. pushing is chad's, by hand, and no key to do it lives on any server

the markdown in ~/notes/zen/music/congo seeded the database once and is still mounted read-only — congo has never written to it and does not start now.

dump