Manual of Text Viewer

This software is used to view and edit philological texts. Texts are made up of textual resources, plus optionally alignments between resources. The respective textual resources may have been developed by different people, and may contain different types of information. It is generally a good thing to separate e.g. an hieroglyphic transcription of a text on the one hand and the transliteration and translation of the same text on the other hand as separate resources.

Buttons in file menu

Not all buttons will be enabled all of the time. In particular, some buttons are disabled for applets.

Close

Closes the viewer.

Pdf

Exports the text as PDF file. Various parameters can be changed, and the target file can be chosen.

Buttons in resource menu

Close

Closes an edited phrase, or closes a subpanel with viewed or edited properties of a resource.

Mode

This toggles between a normal viewing mode to a mode where phrases in resources can be edited. In edit mode, phrasal boundaries are explicitly indicated as small green boxes.

left/right

In edit mode, the last selection of a symbol is moved left or right.

Prepend

In edit mode, prepend new phrase before last phrase that received a mouse click.

Edit

In edit mode, edit last phrase that received a mouse click.

Append

In edit mode, append new phrase after last phrase that received a mouse click.

Join

In edit mode, join last phrase that received a mouse click with the phrase following it from the same resource.

Cut

In edit mode, cut last phrase that received a mouse click into two phrases. Preferably, there must be a mouse click in every tier of the resource.

1-way precedence

In edit mode, after clicking on two symbols in different tiers, the first is constrained to appear to the left of the second. If the first symbol was clicked on twice, then the precedence refers to the horizontal position just after that symbol.

2-way precedence

As above, but the symbols must be aligned one below the other.

0 precedences

Any precedence between two clicked symbols is removed. Precedences are depicted by blue arrows.

Auto align

In edit mode, after clicking symbols from two tiers, the tiers are automatically aligned. This is provided the implementation offers alignment for the types of those tiers. Currently supported are:

hieroglyphic with transliterations, and
translations or transliterations with other translations or transliterations.

No auto align

Automatic alignment between two tiers is removed.

Settings

Properties of rendering can be changed.

Help

Opens this window,

The index pane

One may add textual resources. Much less frequently, one may want to add a mapping between two numbering schemes for a text, e.g. if two different schemes exist for numbering lines in one and the same manuscript. An added resource may be a new file or an existing file.

For tiers, one may want to indicate which tiers are to be non-empty (tick the appropriate boxes). For those that are to be non-empty, one may also indicate how they are going to be used. A tier can be:

normally shown, or
it is taken into account for formatting the other tiers while it is omitted itself from the output, or
empty space is left (e.g. for student exercises) while the actual tier data is erased from the output.

By the view button, properties of the text can be viewed. By the edit button, properties of the text can be edited. (The edit button does not appear when the text or the resources are not editable; this is a matter of file permissions.) The up and down buttons may be used to change the order in the text pane. The delete button removes the textual resource from the text. The corresponding file is not erased from the file system however; this has to be done manually.

While editing header or bibliography of a textual resource, do a right mouse click to see the special fonts and objects that may be entered. (A right mouse click can also be obtained by a normal (left) mouse click while holding down the Ctrl key. This is especially useful on Mac OS X.)

The text pane

As mentioned above, the text may be in ordinary viewing mode or in editing mode. If in editing mode, do a right mouse click to see whether there are any automatic alignments between tiers.

When editing a phrase, a right mouse click on the panel shows the special fonts and objects that can be put in the respective tier of the phrase. The etc objects can be used in combination with precedence links. One may connect such a link to an etc object when there are no suitable symbols for this purpose. The etc objects are invisible in normal viewing mode.

A right mouse click on the hieroglyphic in an edited phrase opens a window for adding footnotes to hieroglyphs. (A right mouse click can also be obtained by a normal (left) mouse click while holding down the Ctrl key. This is especially useful on Mac OS X.) In that window, first click on a symbol, and then enter text. The buttons left and right in the menu can be used to move the position that carries the focus. The footnote numbered 0 is a new footnote for the symbol that is the focus. The buttons backward and forward in the menu can be used to move backward or forward the footnote that has the cursor. This is done only one position at a time.

If hieroglyphic that has footnotes is changed by the hieroglyphic editor, heuristics are applied to maintain the positions of associated footnotes.

Resource viewers

A resource containing images is shown in a separate window. Such a resource also contains a list of signs, as separate interlinear tier that is only shown in editing mode, when alignment with other tiers can be arranged. In viewing mode, one may click on interlinear text, or on an image, to scroll to a nearby position in the image or in the interlinear text, respectively.

Keyboard shortcuts

Instead of clicking on e.g. Close one may also type Alt+C. Watch the underlined capital letters on the buttons.

On Mac OS X, the Command key must be used instead of the Alt key for menu items. (The Command key is the one with the apple and the four-leaf clover on it.) For buttons, including the buttons for opening menus in the menu bar, Alt (not Command) is used irrespective of platform.

In text fields, ligatures and special characters such as 'ß' and 'Ö' can be entered by typing two characters followed by Alt+Z. The conversion table can be made to appear through Alt+X. On Mac OS X, use Command+Z and Command+X instead.