Analytical Tool for the Study of Ancient Texts

This is the third phase of an ongoing project. We are now looking to create a user interface to easily view and edit the data which is in a MySQL database. The purpose of the overall project is to create a tool to analyze ancient texts. To this end we have already developed the advanced functions for doing much of the work but now need a well developed interface. ## Deliverables **User Interface** 1. live scrollable - ability to scroll up and down with continual display of the preceding or following text.? **Will require further explanation ** ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -I think I simply mean that you can see the entries (lines) before and after the entry you're looking at. This probably didn't need to be stated. I only wanted to make sure that you could see more than one entry at? a time. 2. edit on the fly - double click in any field to edit contents 3. Live paragraph form of lemma text below that scrolls with collation text **Will require further explanation** ? ? ? ? ? ? - the lemma is the first word in a row which is then? followed? by variants. The final text however is one lemma followed by the next. So I'm looking for the text of the lemma to be displayed below in a? separate? text pane that scrolls with entries (rows) above. Therefore, it might look something like this: the] a 62 542 dog] dogs 71 370 ran] + quickly 454 74 away]_____________________________________________________________ ...the dog ran away... 4. Fields displayed left to right and are abbreviated (not showing all the mss or large amounts of text) when not being edited or mouse over. 5. Ability to tab between from left to right between fields and with the return key moving to the following line (first field).? Use of arrow keys to navigate. 6. Ability to assign the text of a field to a specific table (Lemma, Variant, Orthographic Variant of Lemma or Variant (nu movable identification), morphological variant (choice to? ***include? ***or? ***exclude? ***in apparatus)) **Will require further explanation** ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -what this means is that the designation of something entered in a field is not defined only by the field it is entered in (though it should appear in the standard order) but by assigning it a label. Basically, if after entering the data for an entry one decides that the word in the first field (lemma) is? actually? a variant and therefore one of the variants is? actually? the lemma, they would be able to find the variant that should be the lemma and via a? drop-down? menu mark it a the lemma at which point it would show up in the first field followed by its mss in the next field and the former lemma and its mss would become a variant. For this to work, the mss for the former lemma would have to be? calculated? from the master list (see 15).? In the case of? orthographic? variants or morphological variants (will need to be set up in database) the user needs to be able to select this option and then be presented with all the possible words in the entry (row) that it could be linked with and then make the? appropriate? choice. For example, in the? sentence? "he picked blue": | Lemma | Lemma mss | Variant(V) 1 | V1 mss | V2 | V2mss | | blue | 56 98 387 45c | color | 123 31 78 545 | colour | 567 789 63 | in this example, V2 is not a different word than V1 but just a different spelling for the same word and is therefore an orthographic spelling. The user needs to be able to designate V2 as orthographic and then select the word it is linked to (in this case "color"). So when the user selects orthographic they need to be prompted to select the word it is linked to (this word can only come from the same row). At this point the user should be given a list of all the words to choose from (All the words for the entry-row (including? the Lemma as there are many? occurrences? of orthographic variants of the lemma)) or have the ability to click on the word within the row (if this is possible).? 7. Include a comments field for each entry for later consideration and a comments field for each entry that is displayed with the associated field (e.g. in fine lineae. ONLY necessary when related field is in Latin. This is not necessary if there is the ability within a field to italicize some text but not all). 8. Ability to label any field to be checked later 9. Ability to display only selected fields (eg. choose not to display orthographic variants, the lemma mss etc.) from left to right or to view only rows with comments or with a field that needs to be checked. 10. Select multiple entries (rows) and combine into one: This is extremely complex as it will need to appropriately manage and arrange the related fields for each entry (row). **Will require further explanation ** ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? - I'll use the example from 3: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? the] a 62 542 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? dog] dogs 71 370 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ran] + quickly 454 74 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? away] ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? -? let's say that we want to combine "the" and "dog" into one, this function would enable us to do so. The results would then look like this: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? the dog] a (62 542)? dogs (71 370) ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ran] + quickly 454 74 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? away] ? ? 11. Languages: Should be able to enter text in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac (possibly Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Latin(italics)) 12. Highlight the lemma word in the bottom pane (paragraph form) when editing an entry related to it. 13. Display tags of entries such as OVV1a and display the entry it's related to either as a scroll over feature or in a text pane to the right.? Related entry or entries could be highlighted but I'm not sure how to view all related entries this way if they do not all fit on the screen. 14. Distinguish between ?€œgewöhnlich?€ and ?€œso in?€ entries through tagging (?€œgewöhnlich?€ and ?€œso in?€ refer to two possibilities for the lemma with each typically consisting of a number of words or a phrase). Display both in the text at the bottom of the page with marks or formatting demarcating them from each other and the surrounding text.? 15. Generate list of mss for the lemma. This will involve taking all the possible mss and subtracting the non-extant mss and the mss belonging to any variant for the entry. Some challenges with be for example when 741c? occurs with a variant then 741* has to be calculated for the lemma? **unless? **it already appears with another variant.? For example, if the total list of mss is 34,56,78,90,120 and one variant for an entry is attested by 34 and 56 then the mss for the lemma would be 78,90,120 which would need to be calculated. For every mss there could be one or more correctors (people who corrected the text) noted by "c" (superscript). Therefore one can have for example 34 and 34c. If a variant has 34c and no other variant has 34* (original) then the lemma would be calculated to have 34*. Conversely if any variant has 34* and no other one has 34c then the lemma would have 34c. However, if no variant is attested by 34 then the lemma would have 34 but not also 34c and 34*. I've included some page mockups to give a better idea of what I'm looking for. They art just a rough idea and will likely need to be modified.