The library

The hub’s Books door opens the library, https://localhost:7654/books/. It is one page: a row of language chips, the books grouped by language, the ＋ Add a book card, and two panels at the foot — one that takes a single book back in, and one for the whole shelf.

1. The language chips#

The chips at the top — all, then one per language that has a book, with its count — are the same row every index page of the toolbox carries. A click shows that language’s books and hides the rest; all shows them all again. The choice is one preference for the whole toolbox, so the video index and the studio open on the same language, and the hub remembers it too.

2. A book’s card#

Each card shows the title and the author in the book’s own script, the transliterated title and author, the one-sentence blurb, and a row of tags:

A click on a built card opens its reader. A card whose book has not been built yet is all one button: clicking anywhere on it builds the book (its reader and its PDF), and when the build succeeds the page reloads so the card shows what the new reader says.

Two small buttons sit in the corner of every card, faint until the pointer is over it:

rebuild

(or build, on a book never built) builds the book again — its PDF and its reader — on the server. The button stays disabled while it works; a toast says what the build is doing, line by line, and then built or the build failed with what went wrong — usually the first error LaTeX printed. When it succeeds the page reloads, so the card shows the new reader; when it fails the page is left as it was, the toast shows the error for a few seconds, and the button can be pressed again. The printed edition has the details.

✕

takes the book off the shelf (below).

While a build runs, the Working… indicator in the corner of every page of Parseh says so, and so does the hub’s own panel: a book’s PDF can take minutes, and you can go on doing something else meanwhile.

3. Taking a book off the shelf#

The ✕ on a card asks first:

Press OK and the book’s whole folder — its chapters, its notes, its recording — is moved, not deleted, to books/.trash/<slug>-<date>-<time>/. A toast names the folder it went to, and the library reloads without it. A reading edition is weeks of glossing and may carry a recording that exists nowhere else, which is why this button never destroys anything.

To have a book back, move its folder out of books/.trash/ into its language’s folder (books/persian/, say) with your file manager, and give it back its own name (mini-fa-20260921-142741 becomes mini-fa). The library page is written afresh by every build, so press rebuild on any card and the book is listed again. Emptying the trash is up to you, in the file manager: nothing in Parseh ever does it.

4. Adding a book#

The ＋ Add a book card opens /books/add/, which offers three ways to begin a book: writing it here by hand, adding text to a book already on the shelf, or having an agent you choose make it in a folder Parseh prepares, while the book grows on this page (A book made by an agent). Adding a book walks through all three.

5. ⇩ Bring a book back#

The first panel at the foot takes a bundle — the zip the reader’s download makes — back into the toolbox: a book you took away, worked on elsewhere and zipped up again, or a book somebody else sent you from their own Parseh. Choose the zip — or drop it here: click the dashed box to pick the file, or drag the file onto it.

While the zip goes up and is checked, the panel says Reading <file>…, and the Working… indicator lists the upload. Everything is checked in a staging folder beside where the book is going, and the book’s folder is not touched until all the checks have passed: a bundle that fails leaves nothing behind.

When it is in, the panel says what went in and where — mini-en is in, at books/english/mini-en — an English book, 9 files, 6.8 kB — and, for a narrated book, which of the three shapes the bundle was packed as (Taking a book away):

Anything else worth a second look is listed under it, and the answer ends with reload the list. The book is on the shelf at once, not built yet: reload the list and press build on its card, as for any book that has never been built. The PDF, the reader and the build keys never travel in a bundle — they are made from the text, so they are made again.

When the book is already here#

If a book with that name is already on the shelf, the panel stops and asks: mini-en is already in the toolbox, at books/english/mini-en. Ticking replace overwrites its authored files with this bundle’s. Two buttons answer it:

replace

puts the bundle’s chapters, book.json, sources, notes and reading.json in place of the ones here, and as much of the narration as the bundle carries (below);

leave it

closes the question and changes nothing.

The question does not say which shape the bundle was packed as, and for a narrated book that is what decides what a replace costs (below). The file’s name says it, as long as nobody has renamed it: <slug>-book-text.zip, <slug>-book-linked.zip or <slug>-book-full.zip, and plain <slug>-book.zip for a book that had no narration when it was downloaded.

What happens to a narration the book already has depends on the shape the bundle was packed as — what a shape carries, it puts in place of the book’s own:

So before you replace a narrated book with anything but the text alone, take a fresh download of it as it stands, choosing all of it (Taking a book away): that zip holds every recording and every time the book has now, and brings them all back if the replace takes something you wanted.

What is never kept, whatever the shape, is what was made from the old text — the reader, the PDF, the build keys — so press build on the card afterwards. The build also writes the times from timings.json back into the chapters, which is where the reader reads them from.

What it refuses#

A refusal names its reason, and nothing is written:

Opened straight off the disk rather than through Parseh, the panel says This page is open off the disk and offers nothing: there is no server to send the zip to.

6. ⇩ The whole shelf#

The second panel backs up every book at once, and puts them back:

Backup every book

downloads one zip, books-backup-<date>-<time>.zip, holding one bundle per book — each one the everything but the recording shape. The recordings are left out to keep the backup small: copy each book’s audio/ folder yourself if you want them kept too, and after a restore put audio/ back in the book’s folder and press rebuild on its card. Because the backup is a zip of ordinary bundles, any one book can be taken out of it and brought back on its own with the panel above.

Load from backup

picks such a zip and puts every book in it back. The button stays disabled while it works (… this can take a while). A book already on the shelf is left as it is, and the panel names the ones it kept — 4 books here already were left as they are: … — with two buttons: Replace them, which sends the backup again and overwrites those books with the backup’s copies — anything written since the backup was made is lost, the timings of a narration included, while the recordings in audio/ stay, as with any everything but the recording bundle (above) — and Keep mine, which leaves them alone. The answer ends N books put back — reload the page to see them. A book in the backup that cannot be put back is reported and skipped; the others still go in.

Both show on the Working… indicator while they run. Off the disk, the panel says Open this page from the toolbox’s own address to back up or restore.

The bar at the top of the library carries the theme button — ○, ● or ◐ for light, dark or sepia; each click moves to the next, for the whole toolbox — and ⏻ stop, which stops the Parseh server — asking first, and naming anything still running, such as a build, that stopping would cut off.