Technical Information


    In terms of user access, there will be a preface to the basic electronic word index which will include a foreword, notes on the Compilation and Presentation of the index, and an Explanation and Directions for its use, plus a list for each alphabetical letter indexed of those "unessential" words excluded on the basis of high frequency, e.g. articles or auxiliary verbs, or others of probable low pertinence for reference purposes. In addition, there will be consecutive listings, keyed to the Weimarer Ausgabe source volume numbers of indexed words, of the tables of contents of those volumes which include the year associated with the subject titles. Given the locus data for each word in the index, a user with access to the pertinent volumes of the Weimarer Ausgabe will be further enabled to approach the scope of an individually suited "concordance." The ready reference via the location of successive instances of any word in the index, and hence by research in the texts immediate to such a target word, will facilitate analysis in the fashion of a concordance. The index will be contained in a text database, basically a file with tab delimited fields containing the data. The number of records will be in the order of 775,000 lines of data, which at a maximum of 30 characters per line will amount to 23.25 million characters of information. This index is to be a cross-platform textbase for ease of importation into databases or word processors, independent of which machine they are running on.

    It is also intended to enchance access to the Index beyond scanning the database. A choice of templates for existing, royalty-free programs, e.g. FileMaker Pro, will also be provided on the disc for users to effect additional data applications such as extraction of index subsets. Since the data is an index, the type of searches that will be performed are basically boolean searches (using logical connectors such as the words, "and, or"). These optional offerings based on menus are intended to make access as easy as possible for the user.



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