Electronics Editions, Hypertexts and Databases: Two Articles of F. Marcos Marín, C. B. Faulhaber (Romance Philology, XLV, 1, August 1991) and Halbgraue Reihe zur historischen Fachschriften del Max-Planck-Insitut für Geschichte di Göttingen

Still topical because of the in-depth, detailed information provided are the two articles which appeared in Romance Philology, XLV, 1 August 1991. "Computers and text editing: a review of tools, an introduction to UNITE and some observations concerning its application to old Spanish texts" by F. Marco Marin presents the main programs for electronic text editing (URICA!, CASE, TUSTEP, UNITE), describing how they work, as well as the pros and "cons" unavoidably linked to the automation of a critical operation such as text definition. On the other hand, "Textual criticism in the 21st century" by C. B. Faulhaber tackles the problems of the different applications of information technology to literature: text archives (CNUCE, CETEDOC, TLG, TLF, ARTFL, ADMYTE); hypertexts; TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) and SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language); hypertext critical editions.

For years, the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte of Göttingen has been fostering research and co-ordinating the results of scholars of different nationalities in the series Halbgraue Reihe zur historischen Fachschriften. Divided into two distinct sections, the publication contains both technical and theoretical contributions on the relation between information technology and literature. Its founder, Manfred Thaller, created a special database called Kleiw for the management of literary texts that is used in Italy by D. Buzzetti and other scholars of the University of Bologna. Thanks to this program, Buzzetti is preparing the electronic edition of a commentary of the XIV century to the Isagoge by Porfirio, written by the Bolognese Gentile da Cingoli. The results of the work can be found in the "Informatica umanistica" column of the journal entitled Schede Umanistiche, which aims at providing a means of spreading and updating these problems, see in particular Buzzetti D. And Tabarroni A., "Informatica e critica del testo: il caso di una tradizione 'fluida'", in Schede Umanistiche, N. S., 1, n.2, 1991, pp. 185-193; Buzzetti D., Pari A., Tabarroni A., "Libri e maestri a Bologna nel XIV secolo: un'edizione come data base", ibidem, N. S., 2, n.2, 1992, pp.161-169; and also Buzzetti D., "Image Processing and Study of Manuscript Textual Traditions", in Fikfak Jurij-Jaritz Gerhard, Image Processing in History: Towards Open Systems, St. Katherinen, Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, 1993, pp.45-63 halbgraue Reihe zur historischen Fachinformatik, Serie A: Historische Quellenkunden, Band 16.

Teresa Nocita