The main objective of the eComparatio project was to develop software capable of achieving highly accurate alignment in text comparison analysis within a synoptic view. But eComparatio is much more - in the first place a easy to use software.
The eComparatio software was developed in collaboration between the Chair of Ancient History at the University of Leipzig and the ICE (Interdisciplinary Center for E-Humanities in History and the Social Sciences at the Max Weber College of the University of Erfurt). The project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2014 to 2016.
Goal of the project was to extend the text diff software ability and to provide a usable alternative for complicated software tools. The development was focused on the requirements of editing transcripts from handwritten documents, printed or digital editions.
The core of the software is a JavaScript text diff implementation, supplemented by a wide range of text tools designed for working with ancient languages. The process accepts plain text or structured text as input.
There are various output options, including visualizations (SVG), raw results (JSON) and formatted results (HTML, tables).
The software is written in JavaScript and is loaded into the HTML structure of a website.
The software can be integrated into any online edition.
It offers five different ways of displaying textual variants - ranging from a reconstruction of the traditional apparatus synoptic, to synoptic views, interlinear view and to a schematic representation.
An outstanding achievement of the software is the ability to deal with translocation of text over different versions of an edition, even a screw pattern can be handled.
The software is easy to use (no install needed), will run locally in the browser, supports larger input and has unique accuracy of the alignment. The Software is actively maintained, the core is tested an matured, the other software modules, like text normalization, are still updated. eComparatio is part of the eAQUA family of tools. eAQUA and successors offers text mining and comparison in the context of digital editions. The tools provide raw results for further usage or processing, visualizations and statistic, language specific background. Some more tools can be found here: http://www.eaqua.net/~khk/eaquaportal/
CollateX is a software to (a.) read multiple versions of a text, (b.) identify differences by aligning tokens, and (c.) output the alignment results for further processing, for instance (d.) to support the production of a critical apparatus or the stemmatical analysis of a text's genesis.
TUSTEP (Tubingen System of Text Processing Tools) is a free, open source, widely-used toolbox for text processing. It is aimed at scholarly audiences, can work with texts in both latin and non-latin scripts, and is primarily designed for humanities applications.