Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Browsing or Reading a Text on the TLG CD-ROM
3. Searching Tips
4. Searching Options
5. Viewing Search Results
6. Copying Text
7. Bookmarking a Text
8. Saving and Printing Search Results
9. Using the TLG Word Index (Under Construction)
10. Some useful TLG realted WWW sites:
    • Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Home Page
    • HTML Author List for the TLG
    • Silver Mountain Software Home Page
    • For more information about Classical Studies resources available at LETRS, please have a look at our Classical Studies materials QuickGuide.

Introduction

The TLG data bank now contains virtually all ancient Greek texts surviving from the period between Homer (8th century B.C.) and A.D. 600, plus historiographical, lexicographic, and scholiastic texts from the period between 600 and 1453. This canon amounts to approximately 69 million words of text. A complete bibliography of the TLG texts is available at the LETRS facility: Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works , Call Number Z 7021.B47 1990.

For more information about the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae CD-ROM or the project in general visit the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae on the Web.

The TLG Workplace is a software application that provides access the texts of the TLG data bank (CD #D). Users can browse and read Greek texts or the TLG Word Index, and perform complex searches of any text in the TLG data bank. This QuickGuide covers TLG Workplace version 8.0. (The images in this guide are from version 3.1, but are nevertheless instructive.)

For more information about TLG Workplace and related Silver Mountain Software products visit the Silver Mountain Software home page.

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Browsing or Reading a Text on the TLG CD-ROM

If you are interested in reading a text from a particular work in the TLG , click on OPEN TLG ... under the FILE menu at the top of your screen. A dialogue box will open up and present a list of all the TLG authors.

You can scroll through the list to find a specific author or you can type the first couple of characters in the author's name to scroll directly to that section of the of the author list. When you have found your author, click on the author's name and then click on OPEN. If your author has only one work, TLG Workplace will display the text of that work. If your author has multiple works, a new dialogue box will appear listing the titles of the available texts.

To view a text, simply double-click on a title. If you would like to read more than one text side by side, follow the same procedure to open each text. Then, when all the text windows are piled on the screen, click on the WINDOW menu at the top of the screen and choose TILE. All the texts will neatly tile across the screen.

Here are some tips that come in handy when reading texts in TLG Workplace;

1. To maximize a text window: click on the maximize icon (a box) in the upper right hand corner of the text window.
2. To mininize a text window: click on the minimize icon (a dash) in the upper right hand corner of the text window. Your text will then become an icon at the bottom of the screen. You can leave it there as long as you like. To reopen up your text, double click on the icon.
3. To completely close a text, click on the close window icon (an "X") in the upper right hand corner of the text window.
4. To perform a search on a text you are reading, click on SEARCH in the menu bar at the top of the screen and then choose CURRENT BOOK.... (See Searching Tips below.)

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Searching Tips

TLG Workplace offers a variety of ways to search the texts on TLG CD#D, and each of these search methods makes use of a common search language. Here's a brief summary of how you can compose a search in TLG Workplace:

1. Diacritic marks, accents, breathers, and iota subscripts are optional, however, in some cases you will want to include them for accurancy. A chart of the transliteration codes for Greek characters is available.
2. Boolean operators AND, unordered AND, OR and NOT are represented by the following codes:N.B.to search using Boolean operators, if you want to find occurances that don't accur consecutively, you must check the "Match across spaces" and indicate the interval between words desired.
   • AND = Two or more words typed together.
     
     e.g.
     
     will find these two words in this order.
   • unordered AND = *
     
     e.g. *
     
     will find these two words in either order.
   • OR = |
     
     e.g. |
     
     will find and either or .
   • NOT = ! (looks like a raised dot on the screen)
     
     e.g. ·
     
     will find and but must not occur between them.
3. TLG Workplace does not support wildcards, it defaults to "double wildcard searching," returning instances of your word even when it appears in the middle of another,
   e.g. would return , , and as well as any other word containing .
4. To avoid instances like the above example, use word boundaries:
   • > indicates the first character of a word
     
     e.g. will find words beginning with
   • < indicates the last character of a word
     
     e.g. will find words ending with
   • You can also use the two angle brackets together
     e.g. will find only
5. TLG Workplace does not allow parentheses or brackets to be used to organize complex searches e.g. ( [ ! ] * ).

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Searching Options

TLG Workplace allows you to search TLG texts in a variety of ways. All search options can be accessed by clicking on SEARCH in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

• WHOLE AUTHOR, like browsing above, will take you to a list of writers in the TLG corpus. Click on the name of the author you would like to search and type your search string.
• BOOK(S) OF AUTHOR will allow you to choose first from the author list, and then from a list of that author's individual works.
• If you are interested in searching multiple writers, you may choose MAKE LIST OF AUTHORS. TLG Workplace will allow you to click on various individuals and then save the list to a file. At any point thereafter, you may choose SEARCH LIST OF AUTHORS.
• SEARCH DATE RANGE allows you to choose a pair of centuries e.g. 5th century BC - 4th century BC, and search all the authors and works dated to that time period.
• The TLG CD #D has each work of each author classified by a type, such as genre. SEARCH BY CLASSIFICATION allows you to search all works of given classification. Choose a classification e.g. tragedy, epic and TLG Workplace will search all works of that type.

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Viewing Search Results

Whenever you perform a search, TLG Workplace will present a list of the search results in a new widow.

To go to any of the search "hits" listed, double click on a reference. You can tile the search result window and the reference window, to see both at the same time, using the method outlined above in Browsing. A click on the right mouse button while viewing the search results window will produce a small menu with which you can VIEW NEXT MATCH, or MOVE BACK IN LIST, or return to the LIST of search results.

To print a list of search results please refer to Printing Lists of Search Results in the Saving and Printing Search Results section.

N.B. 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 (or by pressing <F3>).

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Copying Text

There are a number of ways you can copy selections from your search results for use in a word processor. From the search results list itself, you can highlight a portion of of your search results by clicking on the initial reference, dragging the mouse to the end. Then choose either COPY REFERENCES or EXTENDED COPY (both under LIST in the menu bar at the top of the screen).

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.

If you have opened a particular text, on the other hand, the EDIT menu presents you with with a COPY option. COPY will take a passage you've highlighted to the Clipboard.

N.B. We recommend opening Microsoft Windows, or Wordperfect for Windows before you do any copying of Greek texts to the Windows Clipboard. You can miniminze either program and allow it to run in the background while you work with TLG Workplace.

After you have copied a selection of Greek text (to the Windows Clipboard) using any of the methods listed above, you can then double click on the Word or Word Perfect icon to re-open your word processor and then PASTE your copied Greek text into your new Word or Word Perfect document.

The reasons for doing this are twofold:
1. You can repeatedly copy and paste multiple selections into a Word or Word Perfect document.
2. Both Word and Word Perfect (at LETRS) utilize the SGreek font, so you don't have to worry about displaying, printing, or saving Greek text.

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Bookmarking a Text

In the VIEW menu, TLG Workplace allows you to set LOCAL bookmarks to keep your place and help you copy large portions of text. The LOCAL bookmarks are accessible only within a particular book, and are lost when that book is closed.

Once you have SET a LOCAL BOOKMARK, you may jump to it by selecting the GOTO option under the VIEW menu.

N.B.A 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 <Page Up> , <Page Down> , or the arrow keys accordingly.

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Saving and Printing Search Results

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 the FILE menu.

To print a passage you've highlighted or the contents of any window choose PRINT SELECTION (under EDIT), PRINT FILE (under FILE), or select the printer button from the grey menu bar.

N.B.: Printing Lists of Search Results
If you want only to print an initial list of search results without any extra text, you will have to highlight the search results list with the mouse, choose COPY from the EDIT menu, and PASTE, the list into a word processor such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect.

By default, TLG Workplace will print 2 extra lines before and after the initial match, giving you five printed lines of Greek text for each single match in your list of search results. The only way to print the search results list as it appears is to copy and paste it to a word processor and print it from there.

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