Perspectivia

How do I cite an edition?

deutschfrançais The information required for citations and bibliographical references can be found on the home page of the website just like on the title page of a book and can then also be formatted according to the same rules followed for printed works. The only difference is that the place of publication is omitted and the URL for the website is specified instead.

The URL is the most important information when citing web pages because it does not only provide a short and unique identifier but also the path to the web page, which can then be easily accessed by clicking on it.

It is also best to use the URL when quoting individual pages of an issue. If you are currently on the page that you want to cite, you can copy the URL from the address line of your browser and use it in another text. Similarly, you can also add a very precise link to individual sections of a web page, as described here.

What are the paragraph marks used for on the left-hand side e.g. #1, #2, #3 etc.?

deutschfrançais They are used to uniquely identify the paragraph (or index row or note). If you click on one of these paragraph marks, it is added to the URL shown in the address line of your browser. You can then copy this extended URL and use it in another text. This is very useful for providing a precise link to an individual paragraph: Anybody who enters the extended URL including the paragraph mark into the address line of their browser or clicks on a corresponding link will be immediately taken to the relevant paragraph on a page. Incidentally, they are also called fragment identifiers and always start with the # symbol. They do not necessarily need to be numbered sequentially; this text, for example, uses key words instead (e.g. #fragment_ids, #citation).

deutschfrançais There are two different search options: firstly a full text search, available on this page, and secondly a search of all directories (also indices or tabs) that are found on the site of the respective publication. This search function is described in this section. Moreover, you can search on a single page with the help of the browser (by pressing the keys Ctrl f).

How do I search in a directory or a table?

deutschfrançais Firstly, there is a free-text search function for all fields and for those fields found in certain columns; secondly, there is a search function for selected key words with drop-down lists for those columns where it makes sense. The directory is filtered while the data is being entered; this can slow down entry in the case of large volumes of data.

The search function for selected key words

In order to clear the selection, click on the empty line nearest to the top.

The free-text search function in the index

In principle, the system will search the different fields for the text in exactly the form it was entered in the search field (There is thus no translation of the search text.) However, it is possible to expand the search in a targeted way: If the first checkbox next to the search field (a|A) is checked, the system will not differentiate between upper and lower case letters. (This is the default setting.) If the second checkbox (ab|bca) is checked, the system will search for those fields that contain two expressions entered next to each other in the search field such as harp psalter, although these expressions do not necessarily have to appear next to each other or in this particular sequence. (This is also the default setting.) The greatest number of possibilities is offered by the third checkbox (RE): If this checkbox is checked, the search term will be taken as a so-called regular expression. This enables you to search for alternatives, search according to time periods and much more. You can find out more about regular expressions in this section. Some examples have been provided below:

Searching for alternative terms (using search terms linked with the command ‘or’)

(harp|psalter) (without a blank space)
will find fields that contain harp or psalter or both of these expressions;
(lyre|harp|lute|zither) (psalter|hymn|ode) (with a space between the sets of brackets)
will find fields that contain lyre or harp or lute or zither or a number of these expressions and at the same time psalter or hymn or ode or a number of these expressions.

Searching for time periods

17[89][0-9] finds all numbers between (inclusive) 1780 and 1799.

Searching for variants

hym(nos|nus|n) will find hymnos, hymnus and hymn; Herr?mann? will find Herrmann, Herman, Hermann and Herrman. Men.?šikov will find Menšikov, Men´šikov, Menьšikov and all sequences that have either no character or any character in the .?position.

How can I sort by multiple columns?

deutschfrançais You click on the column you want to sort first. Then click on the other columns while holding down the Shift key.

What is a regular expression and what is it used for?

deutschfrançais A regular expression is a sequence of letters with a special pattern of characters. These patterns of characters are primarily used to make a search expression more comprehensive. Apart from the use of full programming languages, regular expressions are the most powerful way to formulate search expressions. Examples are shown in this section. A full overview of these patterns of characters can be found in this table.

What is included in the table of contents?

deutschfrançais The top level of the table of contents contains the titles of the web pages found in an issue. However, it may not always include all web pages for this issue e.g. if individual letters found in a comprehensive edition of different letters are not listed in the table of contents but instead in a directory of all letters. This type of directory not only allows access to the letters but also enables you to sort, search through and filter these letters, as described in this section.

Below the web page titles, you will then find all of those titles that are included on each web page. The higher the level of the title, the more the title is indented.

If a web page has not been written in the main language used for the web issue, the language is also indicated on the margin. These types of web pages that provide information about the language are often, but not necessarily, translations or summaries of a relevant web page in another language e.g.:
Einleitung
english : Introduction.

deutschfrançais Click on the relevant title. All titles are linked to the respective text.

What is RDFa and what is it used for?

deutschfrançais RDFa is a way to express information that a webpage explicitly or implicitly contains alongside the visible text, namely within the HTML source text. Human beings recognize the title on the frontpage of an edition, for example, with the help of formatting and context. For a computational extraction of the title, however, e.g. for search engines and library catalogues, it is much easier if the information The edition abc has the title xyz can be found in the HTML source text, explicitly written and complying with tight format rules. RDFa is such a format (another one is named Microdata).

On each webpage of an edition, there is a link RDFa beneath the main menu. If you click the link, all RDFa statements found in the HTML of the webpage are displayed: Each line contains one RDFa statement; the format is N-Triples. This output is also returned by appending /rdf.nt to the URL of any page. An example of an RDFa statement on a title page:

<http://quellen-perspectivia.net/fantin-scholderer>
<http://schema.org/headline>
"Correspondance entre Henri Fantin-Latour et Otto Scholderer (1858-1902)"@fr .

That means:
‘http://quellen-perspectivia.net/fantin-scholderer has the title Correspondance entre Henri Fantin-Latour et Otto Scholderer (1858-1902) (and this title is written in french).’

In this way, not just a single passage can be extracted automatically, but the statements of many passages can be automatically aggregated as well. The mention of a person, for instance, may be linked to an entry in the index of persons of the edition. In this entry, further statements about the person can be found, among them links to other resources, which in turn link to further resources. This can result in a network of statements, in which automatic search and collection of information are possible. So far, however, this network is not yet wide and tight, because there is not so much RDFa markup on websites yet.