Latin texts, cont. (83)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Mon, 13 Mar 89 19:36:18 EST


Humanist Mailing List, Vol. 2, No. 714. Monday, 13 Mar 1989.


(1) Date: Monday, 13 March 1989 1004-EST (54 lines)
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS
Subject: Latin Texts and Tools

(2) Date: Mon, 13 Mar 89 17:16:31 EST (8 lines)
From: Joseph Raben <JQRBH@CUNYVM>
Subject: Re: more Latin texts (40)

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Monday, 13 March 1989 1004-EST
From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS
Subject: Latin Texts and Tools

Since Elli Mylonas and Abby Young have raised the issues of
what is or isn't available for Latin studies, a quick note is
in order from this side of the kaleidoscope.

(1) PHI (the Packard Humanities Institute) is committed to the
production of a Latin equivalent to TLG and is working hard on
it. Steve Waite is at PHI, which means that the APA repository
that he has administered for years is part of the new PHI
package. PHI is also producing various tools to manipulate the
Latin texts (currently on IBYCUS), including an impressive
spell checker with immediate editing capability. The basis on
which the checker is built involves morphological analysis
as well, so various other related tools can be expected.

(2) OTA (Oxford Text Archive) lists a number of Latin texts,
both classical and medieval, and should be consulted from the
outset. Several other Latin oriented archives/centers/projects
also exist, especially in Canada (Montreal, Laval?),
Belgium (CETEDOC, LASLA), and Italy (Pisa, Turin?). Hopefully,
more information will be forthcoming as the proposed list of
archival resources is made available.

(3) Some years ago, in cooperation with Eva Thury at Drexel University,
CCAT purchased the Latin Morphological Analysis package and some
texts from Louis DeLatte at LASLA. We insisted that there be no
restrictions on what we could do with the material, and he agreed.
This arrangement has been confirmed with his successors at LASLA.
The Latin Morph program was mounted on an IBM mainframe here by
Eva Thury, who has used it in connection with her project on the
Latin Milton. I have not yet worked with the package, or her
results, but at least in principle, it is availabe to anyone
interested. Similarly the texts (I can supply a list at some
point; some Spinoza and Descartes is included). Our only real problem
at CCAT is time and staff (i.e. time and money).

(4) At CCAT, we also developed a program (on the old IBYCUS) for
identifying illegitimate forms in any language for which lists of
legitimate forms were available. We did a Latin list, using the
LASLA materials plus our work on the Vulgate and some Christian
Patristic texts. That list is included on the PHI/CCAT CD-ROM
if anyone wants to use it. It can be offloaded to diskette or
distributed on tape as well.

Hope this will be of help. Much else could also be added.
I don't think the picture is as grim as Elli suggested, although
it is certainly better for IBYCUS users in some respects than
for other micro-computists. Mainframers are also in relatively
better shape.

Bob
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------16----
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 89 17:16:31 EST
From: Joseph Raben <JQRBH@CUNYVM>
Subject: Re: more Latin texts (40)

A database of Nordic Neo-Latin literature is being compiled by the
Inter-Nordic Research Project conducted by Marianne Alenius and Karen
Skovgaard-Petersen, Department of Classical Philology, University of
Copenhagen, Njalsgade 94, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.