Open Stemmata Database

This repository contains an open source collection of historical text genealogies, in forms of tree-like graphs (stemma) for a variety of languages.

Contributing

Sending your contribution

You can contribute by sending us images and/or metadata and DOT files,

by making a pull request on the main branch (preferred);
by sending it to us via email.

If you wish to contribute, have a look at the examples folder:

It contains several cases:

a minimal record:
a simple case, but with very complete metadata: [./tree/dev/examples/Segre_1971_Roland]
an intermediary case: [./tree/dev/examples/Paris_1872_Alexis]
a full case with …

You can also read our more detailed Guidelines !

Organisation of a record

Actual data is stored in the data folder, and are sorted by linguistic code (e.g., fro for Old French traditions; gmh for Middle High German).

Each record is contained in a dedicated folder, and can contain up to three elements:

stemma.png: scan from the source edition;
metadata.txt: metadata file about the stemma
stemma.gv: GraphViz DOT format file for the stemma.

Generating metadata and DOT files

The following resources can help you create the necessary files:

Our form metadata creator: just fill up the form and get the txt content.
Edotor: a free online DOT editor with graphical view.

DOT format is quite easy to master, and uses the following patterns:

a -> b link from a to b
a -> b [style="dashed"] dashed link from a to b (contamination)
alpha -> b link from alpha to b
alpha[color="grey"] color alpha in grey (for hypothetical nodes, i.e., not extant manuscripts);
1 -> a link from 1 (unnamed hypothetical node in the source) to a.

If you're hesitant, head over to the online editor for creating the file !

We use the following conventions for the DOT files:

directed links (->, with exceptional undirected links if existing in the source indicated with [dir=none])
dashed lines for contamination (with [style="dashed"])
grey color for hypothetical link (with [color="grey"]
numbers for unnamed nodes in the source.

Here is an (already complex) example file with output:

digraph {

    # To refactor nodes, place the cursor left to a node name
    omega -> b;
    omega -> c;
    c -> d;
    c -> e;
    omega -> 1; 
    1 -> a # use numbers for unlabelled nodes in the source stemma
    1 -> aprime
    
    b -> e [style="dashed"] # use "dashed" to indicate contamination
    b -> c [dir=none, style="dashed"]; # use dir=none for the exception where an undirected link is existant.
    
    # Hover over color names to get a color picker
    # Grey color is used for hypothetical nodes; labels can be redefined if needed
    1 [color="grey", label=""]; 
    
    aprime[label="a'"] # We can use the label attribute to indicate the visual representation of a nodes' name
    
    # It is common to use Greek letters for hypotetical nodes. 
    # We recommend naming them with a transliteration of their name in the Latin script ("alpha", "beta", etc.)
    # Optionally, we can add the Greek letters as the label fot those nodes.
    # Here is a list of those letters if you don't know how to type them on your keyboard: 
    # Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, Ω ω
    omega [color="grey", label="ω"];
    
}

Result:

License

Shield:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

gabays/database