PHI Workplace

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Browsing
  3. Searching
  4. Copying Text
  5. Bookmarks
  6. Saving and Printing

Introduction



PHI Workplace is designed to read and search through Classical texts produced by the Packard Humanities Institute. There are currently two CD-ROMs related to this field. The first, PHI's CD-ROM #5.3, contains virtually the entirety of Latin literature up to A.D. 200, including the later writers Servius, Porphyry, Zeno, and Justinian. The second, CD-ROM #6, contains both the Inscriptions of the Christian Empire and the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papryi. Inscriptions, a database of nearly 87,000 Greek texts of the late imperial and Byzantine periods, is intended as a resource for the study of late antiquity. Texts in the collection range chronologically from the accession of Diocletian to the fall of Constantinople (A.D. 285-1453). However, pre-Constantinian Christian inscriptions and Jewish inscriptions of the earlier Roman period are also included, as are non-Christian texts dating to the period of the Tetrarchy or later. In addition to the macaronic Greek and Latin of many of these works, the Judaic corpus includes material in Hebrew and Aramaic. The Duke Data Bank, on the other hand, began in 1983 as a ten-year project at Duke University to construct a machine-readable data bank comprising all published Greek and Latin documentary papyri. Defined broadly, this includes all original documents (as distinguished from literary and subliterary texts) written on papyrus, parchment, ostraca, wooden or waxed tablets during a period extending from the 4th century B.C. to the 8th century A.D. Of the 421 volumes of such papyri published since 1813--over 35,000 documents--375 of them had been included on CD-ROM #6 as of April 1991.

A complete bibliography of these Latin texts is available either online or in print form from the LETRS staff.

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Browsing



If you are interested in a passage from a particular work in CD #5.3, click on OPEN LATIN under the FILE menu at the top of your screen. This may also be accomplished by clicking on the book icon in the grey bar underneath. In CD #6, on the other hand, you have three different options: OPEN CLASSICAL INSCRIPTION, OPEN CHRISTIAN INSCRIPTION, or OPEN PAPYRI; these correspond to the grey buttons marked CLA, CHR, and DDB [Duke Data Bank] directly beneath. In both cases, you will be presented first with a list of authors from which to choose, and then, if appropriate, with a list of their works. To view a title, simply double-click on it.

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Searching



CD #5.3 allows you to SEARCH through Latin texts in a variety of ways. WHOLE AUTHOR, like Browsing above, will take you to a list of writers in the PHI corpus. BOOK(S) OF AUTHOR will allow you to choose first from this list, and then from individual works. If you are interested in multiple authors, you may MAKE LIST OF AUTHORS, clicking on various individuals and then saving the list to a file. At any point thereafter, you may SEARCH ALL LATIN AUTHORS.

CD #6, on the other hand, gives three different options for restricting your search: you may look through a GROUP OF COLLECTIONS (all Classical Inscriptions, Christian Inscriptions, or Papyri), an INDIVIDUAL COLLECTION (e.g., the Christian inscriptions of Asia Minor), or the CURRENT BOOK. Each screen will allow you to search for part of a word, a complete word, an exact phrase, or key words appearing some distance from each other. While PHI does not support wildcards as such-- kr?st* will not find kristos, for example--it defaults to what it calls "double wildcard searching," returning instances of your word even when it appears in the middle of another. "eis," therefore, would return eisin, haymeis, and mnamoneutheisays as well! Diacritics, such as breathing and accent marks, are ignored unless specifically entered. Here, then, we would find both eis and heis. Booleans, finally, are supported as well: * is "and," | is "or," and ! (which appears as a raised dot on-screen) is "not". You cannot use parentheses or brackets to organize these, however, (as (eis [kurios ! theos] * mia | en) to find heis kurios, mia pistis, hen baptisma, for example), so try to avoid them; they tend to return some strange results.

Depending on how you've chosen to search, you'll find your results displayed in a slightly different fashion. Searching the CURRENT BOOK will find all examples of your query, but only display them one at a time. It's up to you to go through them using the NEXT option under SEARCH . Searching INDIVIDUAL or GROUP(S) OF COLLECTIONS, on the other hand, will display the entire list of results. To see an individual entry, double-click on it, or click on it and VIEW MATCH (under LIST). This is particularly useful when you have used TILE (under WINDOW) to view your list and references simultaneously: paging through the one automatically updates the other.

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Copying Text



There are a number of ways you can take selections from your results for use in a word processor. From the results list itself, you can highlight a portion you want by clicking on the initial reference and dragging the mouse to the end, and then choose either COPY REFERENCES or EXTENDED COPY (both under LIST). The former will simply take the citations and extracts found in the list and copy them to the Clipboard, from which you may paste them to another application. The latter will take not only the references, but also the text of their corresponding sections. Should you want the entire list with its accompanying texts, choose EXTENDED COPY ALL. Once you have opened a particular text, on the other hand, the EDIT menu presents you with two different options. COPY will take a passage you've highlighted straight to the Clipboard. For longer passages of text, you may want to use COPY TO BOOKMARK.

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Bookmarks

PHI Workplace allows you to set LOCAL bookmarks to keep your place within a given text. They are accessible only within a particular book, and are lost when that book is closed. Once you have SET a LOCAL BOOKMARK, you may GOTO it by selecting this option under VIEW.

NB: The bookmark will be placed at the end of the line at the top of that window--not where you place your cursor. Adjust your text using the "Page Up", or "Page Down" keys, or the arrow keys accordingly.

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Saving and Printing



Once you have completed a search, you may save your list of results and return to it later using SAVE SEARCH AS . . . and OPEN SEARCH, which are both under FILE. To print a passage you've highlighted or the contents of any window, PRINT SELECTION [under EDIT], PRINT FILE [under FILE], or select the printer button from the grey menu bar.


To end your session with PHI Workplace, choose EXIT from the FILE menu.

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Last Updated: 30 March 2001
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/help-services/QuickGuides/ phi/about-phi.html
Comments: Library Electronic Text Resource Service / LETRS@indiana.edu.
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