Interactive Album of Mediaeval Palaeography
Collection of Transcription Exercises on Mediaeval Documents

User manual: How to Use the Paleography Exercises?

These exercises are self-corrective: we hope they will help beginners in their discovery of the writing used in the account rolls of the Savoyard castellanies, and to improve their paleographic skills.

Nota bene: to make room for the actual exercise, the main menu (here on the left of the page) does not appear on the exercise pages. It is replaced with a context menu, sliding out of the right side of the screen when you click on the "menu" link:

Each exercise has different zones:

• a brief introduction
• an image of the medieval document, where you can click to zoom on a word, or double-click to see the transcription of each word, individually
• a transcription zone, with input textboxes each corresponding to a word in the image, arranged into lines; here you can enter your reading of a word in the textbox: when you leave it, the colour of the textbox changes according to your result (green, red, or orange - see below)
• a “Solution” zone, where you can access the complete solution of the exercise, line by line (NB: if you just need the transcription solution for a single word, simply double-click on it in the image)

The “transcription” and “Solution” can be hidden and displayed at will, by clicking on the “afficher / masquer” (or “show / hide”) link to the right of their title. It may be useful, for instance when the paleographic document is quite long and occupies the majority of the computer screen, to hide the transcription zone when you want to see the solution closer to the image.

Within those zones, each line can be individually hidden or shown (they are displayed by default in the transcription zone, and hidden by default in the solution zone, to avoid spoilers).

“Introduction” zone

This zone is simply for information, to give some context about the document.

“Image” zone

• In some exercises, the longer ones, the image of the document is too large to fit comfortably within the screen with the transcription. In those cases, the image is inserted into a special frame, in which you can scroll up and down to view and transcribe the entire document. You can also click on the icons and to change the height of this frame to your convenience.
• When your cursor is over the image, the areas corresponding to a word or an element are made visible, with a dashed border line (NB: the border colour alternates depending on the line of the text, to improve readability; this colour code for each line is remembered in the transcription and solution zones).
• If you click once on one of those areas, it is activated:
  • a zoomed image of the area pops up on the top left side of the screen
  • the border of the area turns to a solid line (instead of a dashed one)
  • in the transcription zone, the input textbox corresponding to this area receives the focus (the active input textbox gets a blue dashed border line, to be more easily spotted)
  To de-activate the current area, simply click anywhere else on the page.
• If you click twice (double-click) on an area, a pop-up window is opened, showing the transcription solution for this particular area (and only this area).

“Transcription” zone

• When one of those input textboxes receives the focus (i.e. when the cursor is brought in it by a mouse click or a stroke on the “tab” key), it gets a blue dashed border line, to make it more visible. The area of the image that you must transcribe in this textbox is activated: it gets a solid border line, and a zoomed image of the area pops up on the top left side of the screen.
• Once you have written your proposed transcription of the area in the corresponding textbox, submit it by leaving the textbox (either with the “tab” key or a click somewhere else in the page):
  • if you have correctly transcribed the whole word, which includes developing abbreviations, the background colour of the textbox turns to green
  • if you have correctly transcribed the visible letters, but without developing the abbreviated parts (for instance, "dni" for an abbreviated "domini"), the background colour of the textbox turns to orange (“close, but no cigar” ;-))
  • if you have made a mistake, the background colour of the textbox turns to red
• If you cannot find the right transcription for an area, double-click on it in the image of the document: a pop-up window with the solution will show.
• A hyphen at the end of a line and the beginning of the next line signals that the word to transcribe has been split in two parts.
• At the top of the Transcription zone, you will find a link to open a window providing some help with the abbreviations. From this window, you will be able to highlight in the transcription form all the boxes corresponding to words containing one or more abbreviation in the current exercise (the boxes containing an abbreviated word will appear with a bolder border):
  

“Solution” zone

• The transcription solution can be obtained either word by word (by double-clicking on each active area of the image), or line by line in the “Solution” zone.
• In this zone, lines are hidden by default, and one has to click on their individual label to see them.
• When a line of the solution is displayed, it works interactively with the image of the document: when the cursor is above a word in the solution line, it is highlighted and the corresponding area of the image gets a dashed border line; similarly, when the cursor is over an area of the image, its transcription is highlighted in the solution zone.