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📐 Developer & Author Guidelines

1. Typography, Layout & Color Palette

The visual design of the Sanskrit course reflects traditional philological editions coupled with modern web standards:

  • Typography:
  • Body Text: Newsreader (serif font engineered for extended reading of complex grammar treatises).
  • UI & Navigation: Inter (clean, contemporary sans-serif typeface).
  • Color Palette:
  • Primary: #03192e (Deep Navy Blue).
  • Background: #fcf9f2 (Warm Ivory Paper).
  • Signal Red: :sig[...] (Exclusively reserved for highlighting inflectional morphemes in Devanāgarī).
  • Layout:
  • 12-column responsive layout grid.
  • Absolute lesson numbering (e.g., 60.1.).
  • Strict prohibition of raw HTML elements in Markdown sources (scripts/purge_html.py).

2. Sanskrit & Devanāgarī Typographical Standards

To eliminate ambiguity and visual clutter, strict orthographical conventions are enforced:

  1. No Italics: Sanskrit terms and IAST transliterations are never italicized (*...*).
  2. Signal Red for Devanāgarī Only: The :sig[...] syntax must never be applied to Latin text or IAST transliterations.
  3. Protection Wrappers: Devanāgarī tokens must be enclosed in ⟪...⟫ tags to shield them against unintended LLM translation drift.
  4. Table Cell Formatting: No parentheses around Devanāgarī text inside table cells. Multi-line table cells use :br on a single line instead of broken newline rows.

3. Grammar Box Architecture (grammar-box)

Grammatical rules, inflection tables, and notes follow a rigid encapsulation structure:

  • Mirroring HTML Indentation: Tables and formal rules must never be wrapped in Markdown blockquotes (>).
  • Externalizing Examples: Direct speech, contextual glosses, and translation examples remain outside grammar boxes (formatted inside indent).
  • Box Nesting: Subordinate boxes increment the colon delimiter: 
    ::: grammar-box
Primary Sandhi rule governing vocalic finals...

:::: grammar-box
Subordinate exception for Vedic archaisms...
::::
:::

4. QA Gates & Code Governance

  1. Totalbremse (Hard Stop): Master German lessons (docs/lektionen/*.md) and 100% completed language suites are read-only.
  2. Status Truth: Exclusively use get_translation_queue from scripts/translation_qa.py. Never duplicate status or queue determination logic.
  3. Verification Gate: All Python script updates must pass python3 -m py_compile and execute with Exit Code 0 before reporting completion.