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In this document we provide a general introduction on how to use SigLA as well as a more in-depth tour of features.

Quick-start with SigLA: quick searches

The web interface of SigLA is meant to allow the user to perform searches on the corpus and navigate the results. The interface has been both built for expressivity of the searches, as well as rapidity to access common parts of the corpus.

To start, we believe the easiest is to use Quick Search, in the menu on top of the page. This gives an input in which you can type your search, which can be:

Depending on the kind of searches, you will be taken to different pages, with a different interfaces.

Viewing a list of documents

If you have looked for a set of document (eg. `Haghia Triada), you will be taken to a page listing all the documents in the set. The picture of the tablet – in real size if this information is available – will be displayed and below its name. Clicking on it takes you to its page

Viewing a single document

When viewing a single document, SigLA displays its metadata (title, find-place, size, number of signs) as well as an interactive image of the tablet. There are two interactive modes:

Viewing sign attestations

When looking for a set of sign attestations (eg. all attestations of the same), all the attestations are displayed, by default sorted by find-place. The sign is cropped out of its document by default (but a parameter of the search allows displaying the attestation in context). Clicking on an attestation takes you to the document containing it.

Viewing word attestations

As for sign attestations, all attestations are displayed, but in context this time. This means the tablet is displayed and the attestation is highlighted within it.

Complex searches

Beyond these quick searches, SigLA also offers the possibility of crafting more complex searches. In the home page, there are links towards building a new document search, a new sign search (for sign attestations) and word search (for word attestations). In all these cases, it leads to a page where a complex search can be input.

A complex search has two components:

In both cases, a given criteria can be removed by click on the ⊝ on its right.

Search criteria

Search criteria specify conditions on items. These criteria are built interactively from the properties of the kind of items we are searching: for instance, if we are crafting a document search, a criterion could be concerned with its width, or if we are looking for a sign attestation, with its reading. Such properties can be composed arbitrarily to lead complex criterion.

Sign reading syntax

For sign attestation, one key property is its reading. This property is selected by default, and the user has just to type a sign reading to get a criterion matching only on those sign attestation with the given reading. These readings can be specified as follows:

In the last three cases, the variant can be indicating as a suffix, eg. VINa. If no variant is specified, then the reading will match all variants. Finally, a ? can be put at the end to look for unsure readings: for instance A01?.

Composition syntax

Actually, the property for reading allows to do further matching by matching composite signs and their decomposition.

Word expression syntax

Words can be specified as a list of readings separated with -. The first reading can be omitted to look for suffixes (-ro) as well as the first one to look for prefixes (ku-a-). In general one can use -- to mean any subsequence: eg. ku--ro matches any word starting with ku and ending with ro, while ? can be used to mean exactly one sign: ku-?-ro matches words of three signs, the first one being ku and the last one ro.

Group criteria

The lower part of the interface is dedicated to organising the search results. It is possible to give a list of grouping criteria that allow to group and sort the items (documents, sign attestations or word attestations depending on the search) by properties. The first thing to do is to pick a criterion (by default: find-place), and choose a possibility:

It is possible to specify several such grouping criterion, which are then applied in order to make groups within groups.