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A Guide to Using the Digital Edition

The screen view of the edition is divided into three sections: on the left the research and browsing menu, in the middle, a view of the transcription and translation, and on the right a viewer for looking at the originals/digital copies. The individual sections can be fitted in size-wise via the three orange buttons (Menu, Transcription, ImageViewer)

 

Research Menu

The research menu is divided into Table of Contents (bilingual), Entry/Search and Browsing.

 

Table of Contents

Each of the Tables of Contents are divided into the ‘Observations’ - and ‘Maps’- volume. As with a classical table of contents, this will bring you, by links, to the required folio page.

 

Entry/Search

As well as the normal method of entering one or more search terms, the full-text search has the following options:

1. Truncated Search

It is possible to do a truncated search by using so-called wildcards. Entering a * replaces whatever sequence of characters you want (a search for water*, apart from finding water, also finds water channel, watershed etc.) A ? replaces exactly one character (Gä?a finds both Gäwa and Gäta). Both wildcards can also be used within the search term, though not at the beginning.

2. Phrase Search

By using inverted commas you can carry out a phrase search, like with Google. By searching for "Marab Valley" you will get all hits with exactly this word order.

3. Combined and Exclusive Search

In the default setting words are connected by a Boolean OR operator. This means that a search for Marab Valley will give you every page containing either Marab or Valley. The entry +Marab +valley will find only those pages containing both words (Boolean AND). +Marab –valley – unlike the example above – will only find pages containing Marab, but not valley (Boolean NOT).

4. Search for Spelling Variants

To search for spelling variants, add ~ [AltGr plus +] in Windows or [alt plus N] in Apple Mac directly after the search term, and extend it by a parameter between 0.9 and 0.5. The smaller the value, the more variants will be found; values that are too small generally do not find any meaningful results. For example, if you look for Tamarind~0.7, you will get pages with Tamarindus, Tamarin, Tamarix, Tamarinden. This search is particularly suitable for finding Ethiopian spellings: e.g. Birnaheo~0.7 finds both Birnaheo auch Birnāhĕo.

 

Browsing

At the moment the Browsing contains alphabetical indexes of places and plants.

 

Places

The places can be researched using a hinged tree structure. You can also filter the contents of the tree via the four buttons at the start of the menu. Chosing one of the buttons means that only this category will be shown: Places, Mountains, Water and other (no allocation to a category). The buttons can be combined with one another as you like.

 

Plants

The plants-index is a work in progress and will be integrated into the browsing function later. For the time being you can use it in a separate table under the following link: Plants-Table. The index can be filtered via the search function (by entering Acacia, for instance, all lines containing this search term will be shown.) Top left the number of lines to be shown can be chosen. On smaller screens the last columns are automatically faded out and can be faded in using the green plus sign at the beginning. The columns can be sorted by one click on the title of the column in question.

 

Viewer

The viewer contains the following options:

Enlarge/Reduce:

Moving:

Rotating:

The zoom value can be restored by using the arrow on the right-hand edge of the screen.

Return to all Original Values:

Full-screen View