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

Quick-start withSigLA: quick searches

The web interface of SigLA is meant to allow the user toperform searches on the corpus and navigate the results. The interfacehas been both built for expressivity of the searches, as well asrapidity 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 cantype your search, which can be:

• A site (eg. Hagia Triada) to see all documents foundat this site

• A document type (eg. Tablet) to see all documents ofthis type

• A document name (eg. HT1) to see this particulardocument

• A sign (given by its number eg. A302, or phoneticvalue ku, or latin transcription CAP with orwithout variants) to view all attestation of this site across thecorpus.

• A word expression (eg. ku-ro, or -ku –see [@sec:inputting-words]) to viewall attestations of this word in the corpus.

• A composition expression (eg. A302+) to see all signattestations matching it. See [@sec:composition-expression]for more details.

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

Viewing a list of documents

If you have looked for a set of document (eg. `Haghia Triada), youwill be taken to a page listing all the documents in the set. Thepicture 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 interactiveimage of the tablet. There are two interactive modes:

• Sign view: In Sign View, all sign occurrences known toSigLA on the tablet are highlighted, with a color depending onits function in the tablet. Clicking on a particular sign reveals moreinformation about the sign. The color code is:

  • blue and purple: syllabograms, ie. signsbelonging to a word. We use two colors to be able to visuallydistinguish word boundaries: two signs in the same word have the samecolor, so an alternation blue/purple marks the boundary of aword.

  • yellow: transaction sign

  • green: logogram

  • orange: fraction sign

  • red: erasure

• Word view: In word view, only syllabograms are coloured.When hovering one syllabogram, all the syllabograms belonging to theword are highlighted. Clicking on it displays information about the wordand allows accessing the chart of that word.

Viewing sign attestations

When looking for a set of sign attestations (eg. all attestations ofthe same), all the attestations are displayed, by default sorted byfind-place. The sign is cropped out of its document by default (but aparameter 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 incontext this time. This means the tablet is displayed and theattestation is highlighted within it.

Complex searches

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

A complex search has two components:

• The search criteria. Only those items matchingall search criteria are part of the result. All searchforms come with some predefinite criteria such as find-place.

• The grouping criteria. This allows to choose how the results aregrouped or sorted together.

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

Search criteria

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

Sign reading syntax

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

• ? or unreadable: no reading because ofbreakage (sign incomplete)
• unclassified: no reading because of incompleteclassification (sign attestation is complete but not classified)
• With a phonetic value, eg. ku
• With a latin transcription, eg. VIN
• With the standard name, eg. A01 (no space)

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

Composition syntax

Actually, the property for reading allows to do further matching bymatching 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 anysubsequence: eg. ku--ro matches any word starting withku and ending with ro, while ?can be used to mean exactly one sign: ku-?-ro matches wordsof three signs, the first one being ku and the last onero.

Group criteria

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

• Group results which have the same value for the property together,and sort the group either by the property value (eg. by the alphabeticorder on find-places) or by the size of the group
• Sort results according to this property.

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