What is the purpose of a collection of rāga documents?

A collection of raga documents is a wonderful way to share music documents. For each rāga, it may contain PDF, images, text files, audio files, … containing the knowledge of your Gharānā, with the compositions, the lessons and the exercises. Each collection is a great resource for students, teachers, and performers of Indian classical music.

What is made of a rāga documents collection?

Basically, a collection of rāga documents is a set of files that contain the rāgas knowledge.

It has a manifest file information.yaml containing the collection metadata, used to describe its content:

  • The collection identifier
  • The collection name
  • The collection description
  • The collection author
  • The collection modification date
  • The collection version
  • The collection licence
  • The link to your website’s page explaining about the collection
  • The download link to the collection, used to distribute it

A collection can have an illustration named preview.jpeg and an icon named icon.png. This is useful to display it nicely in the app.

Then, for each rāga, it has a folder named after the rāga name, containing:

  • PDF files about that rāga
  • Images about that rāga
  • Text files about that rāga

The recognized file types, along with their maximum size, are:

  • PDF, maximum size: 2MB
  • Txt, maximum size: 50KB
  • Markdown, maximum size: 50KB
  • Rtf, maximum size: 50KB
  • Doc, Docx, maximum size: 500KB
  • JPEG, maximum size: 5MB
  • PNG, maximum size: 5MB
  • MP3, maximum size: 20MB
  • WAV, maximum size: 20MB
  • AIFF, maximum size: 20MB
  • M4A, maximum size: 20MB

(Note: The extension for Markdown files is .md)

As you see, the collection can contain a lot of different file types.

Summary of the collection structure

The collection is organized in a folder named after the collection name, containing:

  • information.yaml
  • preview.jpeg
  • icon.png
  • ragas
    • Abhogi
      • CompositionTeenTaal.pdf
    • Bhairavi
      • CompositionTeenTaal.pdf
      • CompositionEkTaal.pdf
      • Taans.pdf
    • …

The collection folder should not contain any other files or folders, except the ones mentioned above. They will be ignored, but they will increase the size of the collection.

Each raga folder name must have the same name as the name used in the sample collection we provide.

Here is a template of collection for Hindustani rāgas, with all the rāgas managed by iTabla Pandit Studio Pro: 👆Collection template

How to create a collection of rāga documents?

Prepare a folder containing the data as described above. The easiest way is to copy the template collection and modify it. Here is the link to the template collection: 👆Collection template

Important: the collection folder must not contain any other files or folders, except the ones mentioned above. They will be ignored when importing the collection in iTabla Pandit Studio Pro, but they will take space on user’s devices.

A collection should not be too big, as it will be downloaded by users. Less than 500MB is a good size.

Once you copied the template, you need to modify the information.yaml file to set the collection name, description, author, and version number. The version number is important, as it will be used to check if the collection is up to date or not.

Then you need to add the files you want to share in the collection rāga folders. You can remove the rāga folders you don’t need. You cannot add new rāga folders, as they will be ignored in the app.

Do not change the name of the rāga folders. They must be the exactly same as the ones in the template collection. If you want to add a new rāga, 👆contact us, we will study if it can be added in our rāga list.

Then, to share it and import it in iTabla Pandit Studio Pro, you need to compress the collection folder content into a zip file. To zip it, you can do:

  • On Windows: right-click on the collection’s folder’s content and select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder
  • On Mac: right-click on the collection’s folder’s content and select Compress

Do not zip the collection folder itself, but its content only.

Rename the zip file to the collection name.

See 👆 Quick share a collection for how to share a collection of rāga documents. See 👆 Download a rāga documents collection for how to download a new collection of rāga documents.

Upgrading collections

Yesterday, you made your nice collection and shared it with your students or friend, or just yourself on your iPad: MyCollection_1.0.zip

But today, you have added a new file to the collection, or you have modified an existing one…

What to do to share the new version of your collection to your students or friend?

  • Update or add files in the collection folder
  • Increase the version number in the collection’s information.yaml file.
  • Compress the collection folder’s content again
  • Rename the zip file to the collection name.

Important:

  • Do not change the collection’s identifier. It must be the same as the previous one. Otherwise, the collection will be considered as a new one, and the app will not detect it as an update.
  • The version number must be different from the previous one. Otherwise, the app will not detect the new version and will not download it.

Collection’s licence

The licence you choose for your collection is important. It will define how your collection can be used by others. You can choose whatever you want. We recommend to use a 👆Creative Commons licence, as it is widely used and understood.

Here are some examples:

  • CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
  • CC BY-NC-ND: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
  • …

We are using the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence for our collections, as it allows to share the collection, but not to modify it. The associated link is: 👆https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/