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

Find more information on the project website.

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 opening an issue;
• by sending it to us via email, to OpenStemmata [at] protonmail.com.

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

It contains several cases:

• a simple case, but with very complete metadata: Segre_1971_Roland
• a slightly more complex case: Paris_1872_Alexis

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)
• a -> b [style="dashed"] grey link from a to b (uncertainty)
• alpha[color="grey", label="α"] color alpha in grey (for hypothetical nodes, i.e., not extant manuscripts) and label it properly.

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

License

Shield:

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