I finally looked at your sty file. Very nice work. This is the great thing about \LaTeX . 
It is so beautiful to generalize something, and make it repeatable.
Thanks! Nice of you to say! I have been really making an effort to make things modular, by separating text from formatting and seeing how much I could generalize and functionalize the code. I do like that about \LaTeX as well, it is very modular and easily extensible with custom functions to generalize and avoid repetition.
For this project it should mean that it is easy to add new texts! A simply formatted file ā basically one of a variety of templates dictating font size, color, page margins and spacing wrapped around whatever text you want. Iāll be making explicit template files. But for now the basic structure is:
%%%% "texts/sutra-name-compact.tex"
\newgeometry{margin=3cm}
\centering\Large åå¼čŖé”
\vspace*{0.5cm}
\begin{multicols}{4}
\RLmulticolcolumns
\renewcommand{\kanji}{\centering\fontsize{35}{35}}
\compactVerse{č”ēē”éčŖé”åŗ¦ē
©ę©ē”åčŖé”ę·ę³éē”éčŖé”åøä½éē”äøčŖé”ę}
\end{multicols}
\pagebreak
\endinput
%%% EOF
For plain kanji text, its pretty trivial to add a new text.
For now though the hard part is doing the annotations and readings for those texts that need them, since they have to be done by hand {reading}{KANJI}{meaning} the original \heartblock is still at the heart of things of course.
Iāve been especially enjoying the way this project has built itself a website by the use of \href{}{} links and the fact that I host the individual files on my github pages home page, so they all display via the web interface of a browser. The documentation, examples and code can more easily build off of each other I am finding as they are developed in tandem and linked to each other.
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Your message is probably going to disappear, but for what itās worth Iād like to say: itās about the Middle Path, remember? Thereās still plenty of margin between āpraising yourselfā and ānegging yourselfā, in which youāre welcome to share memory feats (like remembering a sutra by heart!) or published writings about topics youāre interested in (regardless of oneās perceived level of skill). The Way must be practiced, yes, and shared too. Soā¦ donāt worry too much about one message ādisruptingā the whole thread.
No need to be one of these guys: 
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@RoseWagsBlue @MashusuJooji Youāre making some really interesting Latex here 
I had been thinking about posting a few favorite parts of my own sutra booklet - in the OP āhereās each kanjiās distilled meaningā format - to see what it would look like if I use WK for that. But now itās allā¦ 
Cool stuff.
Does this mean I can use any cool font I happen to have and use it for copying sutras? 
Iāve been meaning to learn more of this 
too, for quite some time, but thereās already so much on the to-do list, including multiple non-digital languagesā¦ I managed to code a little sidescrolling āgameā once (using a book for kids I literally got at the toy store), but feel like I have definitely not put in enough work yet. Also wouldnāt know where to start, because there are so many languages for different purposes. What do you normally use this for?
(see, @_Marcus that is how you derail a thread 
)
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Yes you can! Fonts have always been opaque for me with LaTeX but they super easy to deal with when using xelatex as the compiler. Just drop each file in the appropriate folder in your LaTeX distro (mine is at ~/.Tinytex/texmf-local/fonts) run texhash to let the system know where to find your new stuff. And voila a new font is available for use with \setCJKmainfont{schmancyNewFont.ttf}.
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I finally got LaTeX running right on my laptop.
I started a github page for my ååēčŖ book.
The code is from several years ago, but I am trying to abstract it to make it reproducible. I have the two main functions pulled out and put into a .sty file. But I want to get all of the stuff with page numbering and such in the sty too. I originally made an unusual numbering system so that the numbering is not the page, but the number of each yoji. The pages get folded into signatures by the package pdfpages. I will give instructions for that. But the sty should pad out the number of pages to be divisible by 16 with blank pages before the back.
So there are several pdfs as they get folded. Look through FourCharacter, FourCharacter1, FourCharcacter2, FourChracter3 to understand the process.
Fourcharacters3.pdf are the final pages ready for printing and cutting and folding and binding.
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Wow that looks amazing! Gonna be spending lots of time in the office while everyone is away over the holidays printing fun things!
My latest contribution: flash cards from arbitrary lists of kanji, vocab or whatever. I used my burgeoning leech list as a test set. Export as csv file with Item Inspector. Reformat text once again hanging things on the \heartblock{reading}{kanji}{meaning} framework. And without too much effort ā , it was relatively easy to style new boxes like flashcards. They come in sets of 15, you print one set (with reading and meaning written in white) Right to Left in columns, and the same set, this time with kanji or vocab printed in white and in Left to Right columns, and you get flashcards.
Here some of my leeches as a demo:
And the source code:
https://github.com/gwmatthews/TheFourVows/blob/main/texts/leeches.tex
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I just finished reading Thich Nhat Hanhās translation of the Heart Sutra, The Other Shore.
I not only found his translation to be original and enlightening, I found the book to be very accessible yet also dive deeply into the details of the Sutra. Hanh has a way of explaining the meaning of details like the 12 links of dependent origination without getting too wrapped up in the trivialities.
I like his writing and thinking, and I will read this book more times.
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It wasnāt until I read Thayās book āAnger: Wisdom to Cool the Flamesā, that I knew I had to keep reading his worksā¦
āAngerā appeared to me in a Barnes & Noble (back when retail bookstores were still a thing and Amazon hadnāt killed them yet) at a time when I really struggled with identity, sexuality, and purpose ā and the deep anger I felt from not only my own failingsā¦ but the microaggressions and blatant iniquities visited on all minorities over their lives.
The book spoke to me much like it did for you and many, many others who seek: in his inimitably quiet, gentle, and most of all, maximum-clarity way. In the book found virtually first tools in my entire life up to then, for dealing with the anger Iād held in that most Asian wayā¦ but like many other physical things, holding anger in simple containment never means youāve rid yourself of it. āAngerā helped finally process the waste into soil 
Another book I treasure for its very detailed yet still accessible explanations of many things in Buddhism, is āHeart of the Buddhaās Teachingā. Those two books sit on a very special spot on my bookshelves: high but accessible at any time, as without practice one (me) easily forgets the teachings
I hope Thayās writings on the Heart Sutra brought you, if not some peace over your lossā¦ at least understanding, which is the structure upon which peace is built
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Thank you for the book recommendations.
Somehow I only noticed Thich Nhat Hanh a year or two ago. I donāt know how I never noticed him or his work.
There are few people who have tirelessly devoted themselves to peace, Hanh is one of them.
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