ekdosis is a LuaL A T E X package written by R. Alessi designed for multilingual critical editions. It can be used to typeset texts and different layers of critical notes in any direction accepted by LuaT E X. Texts can be arranged in running paragraphs or on facing pages, in any number of columns which in turn can be synchronized or not. Database-driven encoding under L A T E X allows extraction of texts entered segment by segment according to various criteria: main edited text, variant readings, translations or annotated borrowings between texts. In addition to printed texts, ekdosis can convert .tex source files so as to produce TEI xml compliant critical editions. It will be published under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3.
This article explores whether and how network visualization can benefit philological and historical-linguistic study. This is illustrated with a corpus-based investigation of scribes' language use in a lemmatized and morphologically annotated corpus of documentary Latin (Late Latin Charter Treebank, LLCT2). We extract four continuous linguistic variables from LLCT2 and utilize a gradient colour palette in Gephi to visualize the variable values as node attributes in a trimodal network which consists of the documents, writers, and writing locations underlying the same corpus. We call this network the "LLCT2 network". The geographical coordinates of the location nodes form an approximate map, which allows for drawing geographical conclusions. The linguistic variables are examined both separately and as a sum variable, and the visualizations presented as static images and as interactive Sigma.js visualizations. The variables represent different domains of language competence of scribes who learnt written Latin practically as a second-language. The results show that the network visualization of linguistic features helps in observing patterns which support linguistic-philological argumentation and which risk passing unnoticed with traditional methods. However, the approach is subject to the same limitations as all visualization techniques: the human eye can only perceive a certain, relatively small amount of information at a time.
The ‘Version Variation Visualization’ project has developed online tools to support comparative, algorithm-assisted investigations of a corpus of multiple versions of a text, e.g. variants, translations, adaptations (Cheesman, 2015, 2016; Cheesman et al., 2012, 2012-13, 2016; Thiel, 2014; links: www.tinyurl.com/vvvex). A segmenting and aligning tool allows users to 1) define arbitrary segment types, 2) define arbitrary text chunks as segments, and 3) align segments between a ‘base text’ (a version of the ‘original’ or translated text), and versions of it. The alignment tool can automatically align recurrent defined segment types in sequence.Several visual interfaces in the prototype installation enable exploratory access to parallel versions, to comparative visual representations of versions’ alignment with the base text, and to the base text visually annotated by an algorithmic analysis of variation among versions of segments. Data can be filtered, viewed and exported in diverse ways. Many more modes of access and analysis can be envisaged. The tool is language neutral. Experiments so far mostly use modern texts: German Shakespeare translations. Roos is working on a collection of approx. 100 distinct English-language translations of a Hebrew text with ancient Hebrew and Aramaic passages: the Haggadah (Roos, 2015)
