The Reader
A book you download once and open forever
The ĀRK Reader is a desktop application that reads sealed, self-contained books. Each one carries its own dictionary, its own index of verses, its own citations and its own scanned pages, and the software arranges all of it the moment the file is opened. There is no account, no server to answer, and nothing to renew.
Phase 5 of 11, not yet released
The application exists and runs: a Rust core, a Tauri shell, signed book files, and a passing gate at every phase so far. It is not downloadable, and this page never pretends otherwise.
Open the ReaderThe reading surface below runs the real registered work in your browser. It is the same reading surface the desktop application uses, and it opens in this tab.
The package
A book as one sealed file
Software used to arrive this way. A game came on one disc and the disc held everything it needed, the world, the music, the manual, so it ran on a machine that had never heard of it and would still run years later. Then everything became a thin client for somebody else’s server, and the disc stopped holding the game.
A packaged śāstra is the disc. One file, sealed, carrying the text and every apparatus the text needs. Open it and the software finds what is inside and lays it out. Close the laptop, cancel the internet, come back in ten years: the book is still a book, because nothing about reading it was ever a request to anybody.
The seal is the part worth understanding. It is a cryptographic hash over the contents, so a reader can prove the text has not been altered since it was published. It does not prove the text was right when it was sealed. That is a scholarly claim, made by named people, and it is argued elsewhere on this site rather than asserted by a checksum.
What is inside
Every part of it, and where it comes from
This is not a promise about a future format. It is the schema the application reads today, and each row names the table it comes from so the claim can be checked rather than believed.
- manifest.jsonWhat this book is, who published it, and which edition
- content.sqliteThe text, the dictionary, the citations, the index
- leaves/90 scanned pages of the printed book
- seal.sigProof that none of the above has been altered
| What the reader gets | Where it comes from | In this book |
|---|---|---|
| The book, and every part of every verse | works, editions, objects | 78 addressable |
| The index of verses | objects(work_slug, locator) | 13 |
| The paragraph anchors inside a commentary | segments | 58 |
| Its own dictionary, with folded search keys | terms | 40 headwords |
| Its own citations, each with a type and an asserter | links | 66 |
| The scanned printed leaves, mapped to folios | leaves | 90 |
| Which parts exist, and which are declared absent, with a reason | layer_slots | — |
| What it cites that you do not own yet | works_referenced | 21 works |
Opening one
What happens the moment you import a book
Five steps, one transaction. It either all happens or none of it does, which is why a half-imported book is not a state the reader can ever be in.
- 01
Verify the seal
The signature is checked before anything else is touched. Any failure and the book does not open. It is not opened with a warning, because a text you cannot trust is worse than a text you do not have.
- 02
Attach the book, read-only
The file is mounted as it is. Nothing is copied out of it and nothing is written back into it, so the thing you downloaded stays byte-for-byte the thing you are reading.
- 03
Build the search index
A full-text index is built over the verses, their bodies and the dictionary, in your own store rather than inside the book. That is deliberate: an index built with a custom tokenizer inside the file would make the file unreadable by every tool except this one, including plain sqlite3 on your own machine. An auditable format has to stay openable by something other than its author.
- 04
Re-resolve every citation in the library
Not just the new book’s citations, every citation in every book you own is checked again against everything you now have. This is the step that makes a library compound instead of accumulate.
- 05
Report what changed
The reader is told how many previously unresolvable citations now resolve. Step four is what makes the library compound; step five is what lets you see it compound.
Why a second book matters
Citations that resolve because you own the thing they point at
Every book cites others. In an ordinary reader those citations are footnotes, text describing somewhere you cannot go. Here a citation is an address, and whether it opens depends on one thing only: whether that book is in your library. Nothing is fetched, so nothing can be withheld.
Mounting a second book flips 8 of them from unopenable to openable, without a single request leaving the machine. The remaining 58 are not errors and the reader does not present them as errors: they are books this library does not have yet, named so you know what you are missing.
The reading screen
What it looks like once a book is open
The default screen holds the verse, its transliteration, its translation and its commentary, and nothing else. Everything the software knows beyond that, the addresses, the layer numbers, the rights, the integrity state, is one switch away and off by default. A first-time reader can use the whole product without meeting a single piece of registry vocabulary.
Mantrarāja
उग्रं वीरं महाविष्णुं ज्वलन्तं सर्वतोमुखम् । नृसिंहं भीषणं भद्रं मृत्युर्मृत्युं नमाम्यहम् ॥
ugraṁ vīraṁ mahāviṣṇuṁ jvalantaṁ sarvatomukham | nṛsiṁhaṁ bhīṣaṇaṁ bhadraṁ mṛtyur-mṛtyuṁ namāmy aham ||
I offer my reverent obeisances unto the fierce (ugram) and heroic (vīram) Mahāviṣṇu, the blazing One whose countenance blazes in all directions (jvalantaṁ sarvatomukham), the terrifying yet auspicious Nṛsiṁha (bhīṣaṇaṁ bhadram), who is the Death of death itself (mṛtyur-mṛtyum).
This Mantrarāja is a garland of eight divine adjectives qualifying Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva, who is identified as Mahāviṣṇu, culminating in an act of profound surrender (namāmy aham). Each epithet reveals a facet of His infinite personality, particularly as manifested for the protection of Prahlāda Mahārāja and the annihilation of the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu. The bhāva is one of awe, reverence, and an unshakeable faith in the Lord's power to overcome all obstacles, including death itself, for those who take refuge in Him.
Addresses
Every verse has a name that does not move
A name is not a location. A book’s title does not change when it moves to a different shelf, and a verse’s name does not change when a publisher resets the type. Dropping parts from the right of a name always leaves a valid, less specific name, which is how the breadcrumb, the go-up action and citation shortening all work, as pure text, without asking anything.
urn:arka:npt.2.9/L06.av#s1one movement of the commentaryurn:arka:npt.2.9/L06.avthat commentator on that verseurn:arka:npt.2.9/L06the commentary, whoever wrote iturn:arka:npt.2.9the verse, every part of iturn:arka:npt.2the sectionurn:arka:nptthe book
Capabilities & Architecture
What it does, and where each part of it exists
Three labels, used without exception. “In the preview” is what you can do on this page right now. “In the Reader” is built and running in the desktop application. “On the roadmap” is neither, and says so.
In the preview
- Layered verse view
The verse, its transliteration, the word-by-word gloss, the translation and the commentary, each separately addressed and each keeping its own attribution.
- Word gloss on tap
Any word in the gloss opens its dictionary entry, with every other place it occurs in the book. 40 headwords in this one.
- Citations that resolve in place
Following a citation never throws you out of what you were reading. Where the target is not in the library, it says so in a sentence rather than a status code.
- Script switcher
Devanāgarī, transliteration, or both. Typography, measure and reading ground live under the same control.
- Show addresses
One switch. It adds the registry name beneath each part and changes nothing else, not the layout, not the density, not the features.
- Search across the book
Verses, dictionary terms and addresses, with diacritics folded so a search for "nrsimha" finds "Nṛsiṁham".
In the Reader
- Highlights and margin notes
Five colours, anchored to addresses rather than to positions in a file. A note written today still points at the right word after the book has been re-typeset.
- Resume exactly where you stopped
Silently, with no "continue reading" banner asking you to confirm something you already meant.
- Your library, with its integrity visible
Books mount and unmount, and each one shows whether its seal still verifies.
- Everything offline, updates signed
Reading has never required a connection. Updates are signed, and choosing not to take one does not degrade the book you have.
On the roadmap
- NotebookTier 2
Every highlight and note in one place, filterable by book, verse, colour and tag, away from the text.
- Re-anchor reportTier 2
After a book updates: how many notes moved with the text, and the one that needs a human eye, shown in context rather than in a log.
- Annotations that travel, with no accountTier 2
Encrypted export and import, plus optional folder sync you point at yourself. A login would contradict the whole thesis, so the honest alternative gets named rather than leaving a gap where a reader assumes one exists.
- Recitation followTier 3
Audio as an addressed layer, the line lighting as it is chanted. The layer numbers for it are already reserved in the registry; the roadmap has not caught up.
What is not built
The honest list
- The application is at phase 5 of 11. There is no download, and there will not be one until the remaining gates pass.
- One book is registered. The library that compounds is real and the mechanism works, but a library of one compounds with nothing, the demonstration above uses a second book file that exists as a test fixture, not as something you can buy.
- Highlights, notes and the notebook need a place to keep them. This preview has nowhere to put them, so it holds none rather than pretending with browser storage that would vanish.
- No audio. The layer numbers are reserved and nothing occupies them.
Kindle gives you a book. This gives you a book, its dictionary, every verse it cites, the printed page it came from, and a note you wrote three years ago that still points at the right word, with no login required to read and no server to answer.