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User:CalRis25/Temp-RICH-Prospectus

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NOTE: This page is temporary and will finally be moved to the project's actual home (perhaps Wikiversity, once the future home has been decided upon.

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon

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This is the Prospectus for a project at Wikiversity.

Introduction

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The project I envision is a classical glossary, which explains the meaning of Latin headwords, primarily those "representing visible objects connected with the arts, manufactures, and every-day life of the Greeks and Romans." The aim is to help understand what a Latin text is actually about, instead of merely translating it.

This is not a "might be"-project, because at its core is a complete transcription of the 1849-book Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (for brevity's sake RICH) by Anthony Rich (a digital version can be found at Archive.org).

The Book

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The aforementioned Archive.org-scan was the basis of the transcription made by me (I really did all the work on my own. I did not use OCR, nor did I lift text from any source, online or other). I used my own set of tags to create a large single input file and added many internal links. Because of these added internal links, the articles in this wiki-version will not be isolated. Additionally, there will be a classed index (by topics) and an index based on Greek words. An early (not yet proofread) version of the transcription as a single-file HTML can be accessed on my homepage (see last entry of the section Learning Latin).

Note: The 1849-edition was the first edition of the Illustrated Companion. In 1890 Anthony Rich published A dictionary of Roman and Greek antiquities, with nearly 2000 engravings on wood from ancient originals, illustrative of the industrial arts and social life in the Greeks and Romans (see this Archive.org-page), which is the "Fifth Edition--Revised and Improved, 1884". However, this fifth edition contains a Preface to the Third Edition which dates from 1873, in which Rich says that is the final version of his work. It is reasonable to assume that no further changes to the text, images, indices were made in the fourth and fifth editions. When transcribing, this fifth edition was unknown to me, but I would not have used it anyway, because for the images I had access only to a print edition from 1849.

What RICH is not

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  • It is not an image gallery.
    • It does, however, contain all the images of the book. These were scanned by me at 1200 dpi from an original 1849-copy of the book.
      • Adding images, as long as they serve to improve the article, is possible and recommended, however.
  • It is not a dictionary.
    • A good online-dictionary of Latin and Greek is Logeion.
  • Its focus is on the "visible" world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, primarily of the latter, therefore:
    • It does not contain biographical articles.
    • It does not contain geographical articles.
    • It does not contain long extracts of original Latin (and Greek) texts.
      • The articles do contain many references, however. Later on, links to online editions (preferably at Perseus, should be added for these.

What RICH is

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The following was taken from the Preface of Anthony Rich's Illustrated Companion:

  1. Define the true meaning of all the terms, technical or otherwise, expressive of any particular object, artificial production, manual operation, &c., which can be submitted to ocular inspection.
  2. Impart a distinct notion of that meaning, by exhibiting a virtual representation of the thing itself, faithfully copied from some classic original, thus presenting the same forms as the ancients were accustomed to look upon, and suggestive of the same ideas as they themselves conceived.
  3. Furnish a general knowledge of the social customs, and every-day life, of the Romans and Greeks, in the shape of a vocabulary, containing all the written terms which have reference to such matters
  4. All of this illustrated by a series of pictures, after their [= Romans and Greeks] own designs, of the dress they wore, the houses they lived in, the utensils they used, or the pursuits they followed, by which we may be said to acquire a sort of personal acquaintance with the people themselves, and to see them, as it were, in a glass, under the genuine characters, and familiar aspects, which they presented to one another.

Initial state

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At the beginning, RICH will contain only the content of the book (Preface, articles, Greek Index, Classed Index), including the images, which will have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. However, from the very beginning it is designed to be improved and expanded.

Improving RICH

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Some of the ways articles in RICH can be improved:

  • Find online editions of all texts referred to in the articles, both for Latin and Greek texts and for other material referenced in the Illustrated Companion.
    • The project will include a page, where the recommended references will be collected.
  • Find online versions for the quotes in the articles and create links to the respective passages in the above mentioned recommended references.
    • Note: the Perseus Digital Library is the recommended collection of Latin and Greek texts.
    • The list of quotes will be collected in a separate section of the respective article.
  • Add images. However, see above: RICH is 'not' an image gallery. Still, some image are useful...
  • Head over to Wikimedia Commons and make the categories of the RICH-images more specific.
  • Identify the real objects the drawings are based on, if these are not explicitly stated.
  • Compare the text of the 1849-edition, which is the core of RICH, with the text of the 1890-edition (see Archive.org) and note significant changes in a separate section of the article. Do not change the text of the 1849-edition given in the article.

Expanding RICH

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Possible names of the project

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  • Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon
  • Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary
  • Illustrated Classical Companion

Project Status

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  • [DONE] Transcribe text using special set of tags.
  • [DONE] Scan pages from original 1849-edition and extract images (ca. 1900 images with total file size of about 983 MB).
  • [DONE] Create python script to convert article text in input format to plain text (1 article = 1 file).
  • [IN PROGRESS] Create python script to convert article text in input format to HTML (1 article = 1 file).
    • Include REDIRECT-articles in automatically created article index. WARNING: REDIRECT-articles are not yet part of the automatically created article index.
    • Create Tool-Tips for images using the caption.
    • Implement categories from the data in the Classed Index.
    • Article: Display categories the article belongs to.
  • Upload images to Mediawiki Commons.
  • Check, if Wikiversity is the right place for RICH.
  • Create project-pages at the future "home" of RICH as sub-pages of my user-page.
    • Prospectus: Explanation of the project.
    • Rules: Explanation of how RICH is to be edited (improved/expanded). Later, this will be moved to the actual place of the project.
    • Special page: Recommended online editions for linking quotation references. Later, this will be moved to the actual place of the project.
    • Example article to present layout of an article (for discussion).
  • Decide on a name for the article.
  • Solve technical problems:
    • How-To: Mass upload of the articles.
  • Upload small sample of articles to test.
  • Upload all articles.
  • Add Special Pages:
    • Classed Index
    • Greek Index
    • Complete Index of RICH-articles: The Classed Index and Greek Index do not list all articles. Some are missing. This index, however, is automatically generated and therefore complete.
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