1. A Generic Toolkit for Electronic Editions of Medieval Manuscripts
Cheng Jiun Yuan
Brent Seales
Jim Griffioen
Kevin Kiernan
University of Kentucky

2. Creating A Digital Edition
Original
manuscripts/
books
Image acquisition
Editorial
Process
Other resources
Digitized Images

3. Advantages of a Digital Edition
Easy to distribute
More accessible
Links to related materials
Facilitates glossarial indexing
Enables searching and other analytical tools
Simplifies comparison among versions
Easily embeds new annotations

4. Type of Tools
Commercial Software are packages designed for general purpose
e.g., Dynatext
Hybrid Combination of tools designed for a specific task
e.g., MS Word (for editing structured text such as SGML) +
PAT Search Engine (for searching) +
Netscape Browser (for viewing)
Custom-made Hired programmer creates tools on demand.
e.g. Electronic Beowulf.
Open standard Our proposed solution.

5. D I S A V T G E Commercial Products 1. Expensive
2. Proprietary standard/format
3. Low extensibility
4. Not customized for digital edition
Hybrid
1. Not integrated
Custom-made
1.Low extensibility
2. Time-consuming
3. Expensive

6. Open Standard Generic Toolkit
1. Open source (non-proprietary)
2. Extensible
- New features easily integrated
3. Integrated
- All functions within one toolkit
4. Specially designed for digital editions
5. Takes advantage of distributed networking environment

7. Generic Viewer/Editor
(invokes different
modules to display
different data)
User can open multiple
viewers to browse the data
as a book or to make comparisons
among manuscript variations
Structured Text
Image

8. Viewer with Multiple Behaviors (Image)
The viewer becomes both browser and region of interest editor
User selects region of interest editor as
current function
Viewer with selected image

9. Viewer with Multiple Behaviors (Text)
User selects structured text editor as current function
The viewer becomes a structured text editor
Viewer with selected structured text

10. Dealing with structured text
Structured Text Editor
Dealing with structured text
Addressed issues:
1. A friendly user interface for user to interactively edit the text.
2. Hide/show desired tags.
3. Automatic detection of tagging errors and inconsistencies.
4. Syntax highlighting.
5. Support “overlapping” tags.

11. Basic Toolkit Elements
Access/Navigation The ability to browse the materials in different
ways: sequentially, as a collation, as a table of
contents, as thumbnail images, etc.
Glossary The ability to index all words in the manuscript,
structure by headword and grammatical function, and continually annotate the emerging glossary.
Search The ability to find the desired manuscript content quickly, and to analyze the manuscript in different fashions.
Correspondence The ability to compare or collate a manuscript and its transcript, another manuscript version, or other related documents.

12. Navigator Editor Various Image Interactive navigator editor navigation
interface
Image
files
Interactive navigator editor
Sequential
Access
Collation
Access
TOC
Thumbnails
Images …

13. Glossary Editor Automatic User edits generated generation Structured
Text
Automatic
generation
of index for glossary
User edits generated
words
Look up words in
text being edited

14. Search Facilities Structured Text or Image Structured Text or Image
Engine
Query interface/
Search form
Creator
Query
Interface
(Search
Form)
Generate query
and communicate
with search engine
Request search
Show results in
text or in image
Return search results

15. Correspondence Comparing manuscript variations
Comparing transcript and manuscript

16. Correspondence Editor
Semi-automated correspondence editor between manuscript image and transcript.
First, a document analysis tool helps the user locate possible corresponding lines/words/letters in the manuscript image and transcript.
User then verifies and marks the corresponding text in transcript and the region in image.

17. Integrated Toolkit Search Navigator Glossary
User can select from a list of available tools:
Search, glossary, image processing tools,
region of interest editor, etc.
Show result in manuscript
Search
Show the selected manuscript
Navigator
Look up word in manuscript
Glossary

18. Distributed Networking Environment
A server
helps locate
services and
resources
A database
containing
data shared
among users
A powerful machine
where the search
engine executes
An idle machine
to share processing loads
(e.g.: to process an image)
Multiple machines for
viewing data

19. What if user is not connected to a network?
Being connected to a network is not a requirement; it is
only a plus.
The user can still execute all programs on local machine.
How does user find desired modules/services from a network?
User simply specifies a modules/services by name and lets the program search for the matching modules/services.
From the user standpoint, interacting with a computer connected to a network is the same as interacting with a standalone computer.

20. Internet Environment British Library and University of London
Western Michigan
University
Supplies digitized
manuscript images
Hosts a powerful
image search engine.
University of
Virginia
Internet
Provides a
useable tool
Provides invisible
image watermarking
modules to the toolkit
IBM T.J. Watson
Research Center
University of
Kentucky
A user creates
a digital edition

21. Related Work: 3D Shape Reconstuction
An artifact is scanned
(requires a special camera setting)
Useful for capturing views
of 3D artifacts.
e.g., wax seal, wrinkled paper.
3D model reconstruction
from the scanned image.
A 3D model of the artifact

22. Summary 1. Open source (Freely available).
2. Integrated (all you need in one toolkit.)
3. Extensible (functions improve with time and use).
4. Network ready
5. A generic toolkit for creating digital editions of
medieval manuscripts.

24. To be edited
To be further divided
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To be deleted

25. Dealing with Structured Text
Appearance of
structured text in a regular text editor.
Appearance of structured text
in a friendly GUI editor.
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