There are a number of exciting new development so discuss at Perseus!
To begin with, a long planned move of the Scaife Viewer to the Tufts IT
infrastructure has finally occurred.
Another common request has been the addition of more reference works
found in P4 such as commentaries on individual authors (e.g. Cicero,
Sophocles, Homer), which form an integral part of the P4 reading
environment. We are happy to announce that the first steps towards both
of these requested features have been taken and are now available for
use on the Scaife Viewer. This post will give a brief overview of these
new features.
A Perseus Dictionary Widget
While individual morphological analysis (the P4 Word Study Tool)
for Greek words has been available on Scaife for some time, for the
first time a Perseus dictionary widget is now available for all Greek
and Latin texts. The interface attempts to default to the correct
dictionary for the current text (LSJ for Greek texts, Lewis & Short for Latin) but this is still a work in progress.
In order to use the dictionary, select the HIGHLIGHT option in the
TEXT MODE widget on the upper right (see Figure 1 below). Highlighting
any word will then 1) show its morphology, 2) search in the default
dictionary (LSJ in this example), and, 3) in some cases, provide a short
definition.
Figure 1: Example of morphology and dictionary results for the word τροφή in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrranus.
The new dictionary widget is also available for all Latin texts, but in this case defaults to the Lewis and Short Dictionary.
The image below does not indicate the full length of the dictionary
entry, which can be scrolled down to view the numerous entries
(depending on the word).
Figure 2: Example of morphology and partial dictionary resultsfor the word magisin Cicero’s Pro T. Annio Milone.
The Beginning of a Commentary Integration
Although a number of Homeric texts have had commentaries from the New Alexandria Foundation
for a number of years, for the first time a limited number of Perseus
commentaries (from P4) are available in Scaife. The first collection of
commentaries that have been released are commentaries by Sir Richard
Jebb on the plays of Sophocles. Viewing the Oedipus Tyrannus once more (Figure 1 above), the Commentary widget is found beneath the Perseus Dictionaries and Short Definitions.
Figure 3: Example of a commentary now available for readingwith Sophocles Oedipus Tyrranus.
Clicking on the expansion icon in the Commentary widget panel (Figure
3 above) reveals all applicable commentary available for the selected
text section (with a scroll bar to read the full commentary as
illustrated in Figure 4 below)
Figure 4: Reading the text of Oedipus Tyrannuswith the commentary expanded.
Latin commentaries for the orations of Cicero are soon to follow!
Changes to the Interface
There have also been some changes made to the main interface to try
and make the reading environment a bit cleaner. There are a large number
of widgets available in the Scaife Viewer reading panel as well as
bibliographic information. As part of this new release, some
information has been relocated in order to present a more logical flow.
As seen in Figure 5 below, the right hand panel is now entirely
dedicated to word study and deeper reading tools including the word
highlighting feature, the morphology tool, the Perseus dictionaries,
commentaries (when available) and display settings such as text size and
width.
The left hand panel is dedicated to text navigation and information
regarding the text itself including the CTS-URN, the relevant passage,
the ability to Search the currently displayed text, Attributions for the
source file, the ability to Export the passage as text or XML, and a
link to this file in the relevant GitHub Repository.
Figure 5: The new interface for the reading environment in the Scaife Viewer.
This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a continuing
update of new texts and commentaries in Scaife. We are still working out
various issues so if you find any bugs or want to let us know what you
think, please email the Perseus webmaster or open a GitHub issue.
The AWOL Index: The bibliographic data presented herein has been programmatically extracted from the content of AWOL - The Ancient World Online (ISSN 2156-2253) and formatted in accordance with a structured data model.
AWOL is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Penn State University
AWOL began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I moved it to its own space here beginning in 2009.
The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.
The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.
AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
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