Classical Text Editor – useful?
I was wondering about how to turn the .doc files for the Eusebius and Origen books into something printable, with properly kerned text, etc. An email suggested that I might like to look at the Classical Text Editor. So I pulled down the demo and had a play.
Unfortunately all you are presented with on start-up is a blank screen. This is not very helpful. I tried importing a word document, and it did import. But it wasn’t at all clear what the benefit was, once I had done so. Possibly the output to print is better — but in the demo version this is disfigured every inch with a logo indicating that this is an unregistered copy, so I couldn’t be sure.
In short, I found it baffling. The help suggested using templates; but none seemed to be supplied as default. Like most people I edit in Word. What does this tool give me?
Probably it is a good tool. But without a guide, it’s useless. I would imagine that most people using this have been shown how to use it by someone else. That must limit the take-up. I couldn’t find anything useful online.
Have you tried Nota Bene?
Nota Yete.
But I see no mention of kerning…
Have you looked into using either Latex or XeTex (http://www.latex-project.org/)?
It has sort of a sharp learning curve, but what you can do with it is amazing. You can type-set and prepare documents for printing with relative ease. And it is free, which is always a nice thing.
here is a short thread discussing some uses with parallel texts and critical editions (http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9393&p=73986).
I need something with a gentle learning curve, tho.
CTE does have a samples directory with 3 or 4 good looks at what it can do. The documentation is weak and the attitude of the author is a bit distant, With the proper unicode fonts the program is elegant
I tried it out a bit, but soon gave up. These things have to hand-hold you, when you use them. Few people have the time to fight with them.
I don’t think it is too easy to figure out by yourself. I’ve just learned how to use it but with the help of someone who already knew it. The big advantage to it, in my opinion, is the ease with which you can note variants. You type in your base text from one ms, and then read through another and when you have a variant, you click on the annotation button and you type it in. The variant is anchored to the word or words in the main text that you had highlighted, and when you print it, you get a nice set of annotations that are automatically produced. If you want, you can even have a couple of sets of annotations and notes. Doing this work on a regular word processor would be almost impossible. I don’t know what your text is, but if you have everything done and your problem is typesetting and how things will look on the printed page, then I don’t think CTE will help you very much. If you’re producing a critical edition from several manuscripts with a large number of variants and notes, then it will help you a ton.