Glossaries: keeping the meaning you chose

01What a glossary is for

Every word in the gloss shows its meanings from ten dictionaries, and the chip shows the first of them. Often that is not the one you want: ཆོས is Dharma in one line and phenomena in the next. Tapping the right meaning fixes that word, for as long as that reading is on screen.

That is enough for one passage. It is not enough for someone working through one text for a month, who chooses Dharma for ཆོས on every page of their practice texts, and phenomena on every page of the Abhidharma course they are translating, hundreds of times over. A glossary is how Kerog remembers that choice, so every later reading opens on it: on the chip, on the word’s card, and in the gloss you copy.

If you never use glossaries, nothing changes for you. A tap on a meaning never writes to one, and the glossary menu stays out of the way until you have one.

02Choosing a meaning, and remembering it

1. Open the word. Tap its chip in the gloss. Its card lists the meanings each dictionary gives.
2. Tap the meaning that fits. The chip now shows it, and the card says phenomena — this word only. Nothing is remembered yet: this is a choice for this one word, here.
3. Remember it. Under the meanings is a row headed Remember for every ཆོས, with a button for each glossary in use — My glossary, and the project glossary if one is in use. Tap one. The button fills and shows a check: that glossary now holds this meaning for this word.

Tap a filled button again to forget the meaning in that glossary. A long-press on any meaning gives the same choices as a menu: Show Here Only, or Remember in one of the glossaries in use.

What a remembered meaning covers

The caption names the word the entry is for, and it may not be the word as written. བྲལ་བས and བྲལ་བར are found in the dictionaries through བྲལ་བ, and show its meanings, so the row says Remember for every བྲལ་བ, and one entry serves all three.

The entry keeps the meaning’s words, not its place in a list, so it holds when the dictionaries are updated or reordered. If a dictionary stops giving that meaning altogether, the entry stays, as your own wording (section 5). Kerog never drops a meaning you chose.

03What the word shows, and why

A chip whose meaning came from a glossary carries a small dot. Meanings you tapped yourself look as they always have. When a chip says something you did not expect, open it: on its card, the line under the meanings, just above Remember, says where the meaning came from.

So a tap on the meaning shown peels away one layer at a time: your own choice first, then the glossary’s. A tap on any other meaning always makes it this word’s.

Your own choices are never overwritten

• A tap changes one word. The same word elsewhere on the page keeps what it showed.
• Remembering changes the other places the word appears — but only those you have not chosen by hand. The word you acted on keeps showing what it showed.
• Nothing else moves a hand choice either: not switching the project in use, not editing a glossary, not an import, not a change arriving from your other device.
• Hand choices last as long as the reading. They survive Translate and a correction to the sentence. When you leave the reading for another mode it is cleared, as it always is; what comes back next time is only what is in a glossary.

04My glossary and project glossaries

My glossary is the one for every reading. There is only one, it is always in use, and it cannot be renamed or deleted.

Project glossaries are yours to name: one per text, course or teacher, as many as you like. At most one is in use at a time. Where it has a meaning for a word, that meaning wins over My glossary; where it has none, My glossary’s still applies. For each word, Kerog shows the first of these that has a meaning:

1. The meaning you tapped on this wordFor this reading only.
2. The project glossary in useIf it has the word.
3. My glossaryIf it has the word.
4. The dictionaries’ orderThe first meaning the dictionaries give, as before glossaries existed.

Choosing the glossary in use

The same menu is in several places. It lists My glossary only, each project, New Project Glossary… and Manage Glossaries….

• iPhone: the glossary chip in the reading’s header, and the Glossaries card in Settings.
• Mac: the glossary menu in the window’s toolbar, and Read ▸ Glossary in Use in the menu bar.

The chip and the toolbar menu appear once glossaries are in play — when My glossary holds a word, or a project exists. Before that, start one from Settings, or simply tap My glossary in a word’s Remember row.

New Project Glossary… asks for a name, makes the glossary and puts it in use. It starts empty, so nothing on screen changes until you remember a word in it.

The choice stands until you change it, for the whole app, and survives quitting. It belongs to each device: your Mac can be on the Abhidharma course while your phone is on your practice texts, and changing one never changes the other.

05In your own words

A teacher’s word list is written in the teacher’s words, and they are often not a dictionary’s. The bundled dictionaries give བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས as bodhicitta, awakened heart or enlightened mind; if your teacher says mind of enlightenment, a glossary can hold that instead.

Write it in the glossary itself: open the word in the manager and type in Or in your own words. Or bring it in with a list (section 8). Your wording then shows like any glossary meaning, on the chip and first on the card, under the glossary’s name.

The card itself stays a place for picking from the dictionaries: its Remember row remembers their meanings, and offers no button for a glossary whose meaning for the word is your own wording.

06Managing glossaries

iPhone: Settings ▸ Glossaries, or Manage Glossaries… from the glossary menu. Mac: Glossaries in the sidebar, or ⌘6.

Each glossary

• Use or Stop Using — the same as the glossary menu.
• Rename…, Duplicate, Export… (section 7) and Delete….
• My glossary has Remove All Words… instead of Rename and Delete.
• New Project Glossary… and Import… sit under the list.

Each word

A glossary lists its words with the meaning chosen for each. The search field takes Tibetan, Wylie or English. Under a meaning you may see:

• own wording — a meaning no dictionary gives (section 5).
• instead of, with My glossary’s meaning — in a project glossary, where My glossary has a different one. The project’s wins while it is in use.
• ⚠ Not in Kerog’s dictionaries — it will not show in a reading. An imported word Kerog cannot find. Kerog only divides text into words its dictionaries know, so this entry will never meet a chip. Check its spelling.

Open a word to see its meanings again as the card shows them, and pick another, type your own, Remove it, or Copy to the other glossary in use. A long-press on the word gives Change Meaning…, Copy to… and Remove; on the Mac, ⌫ removes the selected word.

Every change here reaches the reading on screen at once, without touching the words you chose there by hand.

07A glossary is a spreadsheet

A glossary leaves Kerog, and comes back in, as a CSV file: one row per word, the Tibetan and its meaning. It opens with a double-click in Numbers or Excel, imports into Google Sheets, and previews in Quick Look, so a list can be printed, handed to a study group, checked by a teacher, or kept with the rest of your notes.

tibetan,meaning
ཆོས,phenomena
ཐུབ་པ,the Sage
བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས,mind of enlightenment
བྲལ་བ,free from

To export: Export… on the glossary in the manager. On the iPhone it opens the share sheet, to save to Files, send by Mail or Messages, or AirDrop to a Mac. On the Mac it asks where to save, and File ▸ Export Glossary… does the same.

What the file holds:

• A header, tibetan,meaning, then the words in Tibetan order. Wylie and the dictionary a meaning came from are left out; Kerog finds them again when the file comes back.
• The separator your region’s spreadsheets expect: a comma, or a semicolon where numbers are written with a decimal comma. Excel then opens the file in two columns, with the Tibetan intact.
• A meaning that begins with =, +, - or @ is written after an apostrophe, so a spreadsheet does not run it as a formula. Kerog takes the apostrophe off when the file comes back in.

08Importing a word list

iPhone: Import… in the manager. Mac: Import… in the Glossaries pane, File ▸ Import Glossary…, or drop the file onto the pane.

Those are the only ways in. A CSV opened in Kerog from Files, Mail or the Finder is treated as text and goes to Text mode, like any other text, so a file is never made into a glossary by accident.

What Kerog can read

Any word list a spreadsheet writes:

• Columns separated by commas or semicolons, with or without a header.
• With a header, Kerog finds the word in a column named tibetan, bo, headword, term or word, and the meaning in one named meaning, english, en, sense, gloss or translation. Other columns are ignored. Without a header, the first column is the word and the second its meaning.
• Words in Wylie, in a wylie or ewts column or in place of the Tibetan, are converted, as a Look up search converts them. A closing tsheg or shad is dropped.
• A row with no meaning is skipped. A word that appears twice keeps its last row.
• Up to 20,000 rows and 5 MB.

The preview, before anything changes

Kerog reads the file and shows what it found before writing anything: how many words use a dictionary meaning, how many are in the list’s own words, which words are not in Kerog’s dictionaries, and which rows were skipped, and why. Then give it a name — the file’s, to begin with — and choose where it goes:

• A new project glossary of that name.
• Replace the glossary that already has that name, offered whenever one does — My glossary included. Replacing keeps that glossary’s place, so if it was in use it still is.

Switch on Use it now to put it in use straight away. Nothing is written until you tap Import.

09The same glossaries on iPhone and Mac

Where iCloud Drive is on for Kerog, your glossaries are kept in a Kerog folder in your iCloud Drive, one CSV file each, named after the glossary — the same file Export writes. A word remembered on your phone is on your Mac a moment later, and a project made on the Mac is in the phone’s menu. This is on unless you switch it off.

The switch is Sync with iCloud Drive, on the Glossaries card in Settings, on both devices. The line under it says where things stand:

Up to date

Up to date in iCloud Drive.

Working

Looking in iCloud Drive… Bringing glossaries from iCloud Drive… A first look, or a file still on its way down.

Offline

Waiting to send to iCloud Drive. Your changes are kept, and sent when there is a connection.

Off

Glossaries stay on this iPhone. You switched it off; on the Mac it says Mac.

No iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is off for Kerog on this iPhone. Signed out of iCloud, iCloud Drive off, or Kerog switched off for it in the system’s iCloud settings. Glossaries stay on the device.

Another account

This iPhone is signed in to another iCloud account. Kerog switched sync off by itself rather than carry one person’s glossaries into another’s iCloud. Turn it on to use that account’s glossaries.

A file will not read

Kerog cannot read “Abhidharma course.csv” in iCloud Drive. Changes to that glossary stay on this device until the file reads again (section 10).

iCloud refused

Kerog could not send a glossary to iCloud Drive: … followed by iCloud’s reason — its storage full, for example.

Switching it off, and on again

• Off moves and deletes nothing. Each device keeps its own complete copy, and the folder stays for your other devices.
• On again joins the device’s glossaries with the folder’s, word by word, and removes nothing. A project deleted on another device in the meantime can come back; delete it again if so.
• The first time a device syncs, My glossary is joined with the folder’s, and a project with the same name as one in the folder is joined to it, so the same list imported on both devices becomes one glossary, not two.

Only glossaries that exist are copied: My glossary has no file until it holds a word, and the folder appears with the first word you remember. The glossary in use is not synced; each device keeps its own (section 4).

10Working in the Kerog folder

The folder is in iCloud Drive in the Finder and in the Files app. It is yours, and what you do in it means what it looks like:

Open it

Nothing happens to the glossary. You see a table of words and meanings.

Edit it

Change a meaning, add a word, take one out: the change reaches Kerog on every device, as if you had made it in the manager. Excel and text editors save a CSV in place; from Numbers, export a CSV over the file.

Rename it

The glossary is renamed on every device and stays the same glossary — still in use, if it was. My glossary keeps its name, so its file is renamed back.

Delete it

The glossary is deleted on every device — except one that changed it since it last synced, which puts it back. The file stays in the Trash, and in iCloud Drive’s Recently Deleted for 30 days. My glossary’s file is put back; to empty it, use Remove All Words in Kerog.

Add a CSV

A teacher’s list, a backup, a duplicate: it becomes a new project glossary named after the file, not in use, so nothing on screen changes.

Replace it

Put another list there under the same name, and the glossary takes the list’s words: those not in it go, the rest come in.

Anything else

Kerog reads only .csv files at the top of the folder. Other files are ignored, and folders inside it are not used.

A broken file

An empty file, or one that is not text, is left exactly as it is, never written over. That glossary stops syncing until the file reads again, and the Settings line names it. Restore it from Recently Deleted, or export the glossary from a device that still has it.

A file name cannot hold / or :, so those characters become - in the file’s name. Two glossaries whose names make the same file name are told apart with a number.

11When two devices disagree

Each device remembers what the folder last agreed with it, so it can tell what changed on each side since. Then:

• A change on one side only is taken. A word added, changed or removed on one device, or in the file by hand, and untouched on the other, is added, changed or removed on both.
• A word changed on both goes to the later change. ཆོས remembered as phenomena on the phone at 10:02 and as Dharma on the Mac at 10:05 is Dharma on both. A change made in the file counts from when the file was saved.
• A word removed on one side and changed on the other is kept. A word that comes back costs a tap to forget again; a lost choice cannot even be seen to be missing.
• A rename follows the same rules: on one side, taken; on both, the later one.
• A glossary deleted on one device is deleted on the others, unless one of them changed it after it last synced. That device puts it back, because an older delete must not take later work.

Hand choices in a reading are never touched by any of this (section 3).

12What goes to iCloud

Sent, unless you switch it off

Each glossary: its name, its words, and the meaning you chose for each, or wrote in your own words. To your own iCloud Drive, under your Apple account.

Never sent

The sentence a meaning was chosen in, and anything you recorded, typed or photographed. Kerog keeps no example sentences with an entry, anywhere.

Never to this project

Anything at all. The folder is in your iCloud Drive, and the developer has no way to read it.

Apple encrypts iCloud Drive end to end only when Advanced Data Protection is on for your account. To keep glossaries on the device alone, switch off Sync with iCloud Drive; nothing is deleted. The full account is in the privacy policy.