Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Cambridge MS B.15.17 (W)
	Instructions

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General Instructions

For Users running Windows 3.1:

We strongly recommend that you read all instructions before proceeding. You will find out how to load the necessary fonts, get around in the volume, and interpret the conventions used to display different aspects of the text.

The title pagethe first to come up when The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive CD is loadedincludes a table of contents comprising underlined hypertextual links which may be clicked to access the various sections of this volume. Click on the HTML browser you wish to use. That will call up a table of contents giving access to the preface and introductory materials as well as to the passus files.

Certain special characters (the yogh, punctus elevatus, some symbols in the phonetic alphabet, and so on) will not display with the standard fonts available on most computers. Before attempting to view the text, load the Junicode fonts provided on the CD onto your hard drive. This is necessary even if you previously loaded fonts from the first CD of The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive; additional special characters were required for this edition.

Open your CD drive in your directory. Locate the file folder labeled "CD-ROM." Navigate to the folder named "Fonts." Click once on "Fonts," highlight the Junicode fonts, and drag them into a file folder also named "Fonts" within the "Windows" file folder, which usually appears on the C: drive. You will then need to edit the Preferences for your browser to instruct it to use the Junicode font. Consult your Windows 3.1 manual for instructions. The special characters will display correctly the next time the disk is loaded.

Display Conventions in the Text

Though the base texts for this edition are prepared in SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), the text you are now reading is derived from the base text via an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) version into HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). As we have noted, this form restricts search functions and some of the display options. However, since the base texts are in plain ASCII form, using an ordinary text editor you can perform searches on the *.sgm texts for structural features .

The files with an "htm" or "html" extensions lack structural markup. For example, when your screen reads "Oon highte Austyn" in a passus file, the underlying "sgm" text reads "Oon highte <HI rend="bastard anglicana">Austyn</HI>," thus identifying the shift in the style of the script. The HTML files, on the other hand, will have in this instance only the display markup <HI REND="it">. The SGML markup enables searches for paleographic features such as this shift of script from Anglicana Formata to Bastard Anglicana.or for words and phrases as well as for lexical, textual, codicological, and other features.

In place of the customized presentations of four different aspects of the text in Multidoc Pro through the use of style sheets we offer only three different views of the edited text in HTML. These views, labelled "Scribal," "Critical," and "AllTags," may be selected from the underlined words in the top left corner at the head of each passus file. For the differences among these views, see Presentation of Text: Style Sheets.

The following chart is a key to the color coding used within each style sheet.

Red	Red occurs in the Scribal and AllTags style sheets where the scribe used red ink. Characters distinguished in the SGML files with the tag <HI REND="tr"> because the scribe has highlighted them with a touch of red ink are displayed in red as well. A reader who wishes to find these may do so by searching for "tr" in the plain ascii .sgm files.
Blue	Blue in the Scribal and AllTags style sheets indicates textual elements written in blue ink.
Lime	Lime in the Scribal and AllTags style sheets indicates all matter appearing inside the SGML tag <ORIG> (=original reading). For instance, W5.164 reads "Til þow lixt and þow lixt · lopen outatones" with "atones" appearing in lime green in both Scribal and Alltags. (AllTags also displays the regularized reading. See "Olive" below.)
Olive	Olive in the AllTags style sheet indicates a regularized reading (contents of a <REG> tag) shown in conjunction with the corresponding <ORIG> reading in lime green. For instance, W5.164 reads "Til þow lixt and þow lixt · lopen outatones /at ones." Note that the Critical style sheet prints only "at ones" without any marker to call attention to it.
Purple	Purple in the Scribal and AllTags style sheets distinguishes readings that we take to reflect scribal error (the contents of <SIC> tags). For example, at 5.165, the Scribal style sheet will read "And eiþer hite ooþer · vnder þe cheke." The AllTags style sheet will read "And eiþer hite /hit[t]e ooþer · vnder þe cheke." The Critical style sheet will read "hit[t]e" in black.
Teal	Teal appears only in the AllTags style sheet, where it marks the contents of a <CORR> (= correction) tag which is separated from the contents of a matching <SIC> tag by a purple virgule.
Aqua	Aqua in the AllTags style sheet represents supralinear, inline, and marginal additions by the original scribe. Additions by other hands appear in notes.
Gray	Gray in the AllTags style sheet represents text that has been damaged but is still legible.
Fuchsia	Fuchsia in the AllTags style sheet represents text that is unclear for any reason.

Text written in Anglicana Formata is presented in Times Roman type in Scribal and AllTags style sheets. Resolutions of abbreviations, suspensions, and brevigraphs are presented in Times Roman Italic in those style sheets. Where the scribe has changed his script to Bastard Anglicana, the basic type face is Times Roman Italic with abbreviations, suspensions, and brevigraphs expanded into regular Times Roman. In the Critical style sheet, elements in Latin or French are italicized.

These conventions will not always display the actual textual situation. We attempt to represent all significant physical features of the manuscript text with SGML tags. In display, however, not all of those features will necessarily appear. In some cases, the limitation lies in the simple absence of a feature in the software. We cannot, for example, represent colored underlining with a colored line under the text; nor can we indicate when portions of text are marked with a colored box. Text surrounded in the manuscript inside red boxes is presented in red ink against a wheat colored background.We can represent the line or box but not its actual color.

For any complete search for structural features in the text marked in SGML, it will be necessary to call up and search the "sgm" files directly with an ASCII text editor.

Notes to the Middle English text are distinguished by different icons according to type:

^1(c) Codicological note

^2(p) Paleographic note

^3(l) Lexical or linguistic note

⁴ Textual note

Digital images in the Introduction and WAbbrev file may be summoned by clicking once on icons like this one . The window should be closed after use by clicking on the "x" in the top right corner to avoid accumulation of multiple screens. Within the passus files, click on the underlined word "fol." at the top of each leaf to call up the facsimile page.

WWW Site for Errata, FAQs, et al.

This documentary edition is the second in a planned series of combined diplomatic transcriptions and color facsimile editions of every manuscript and early printed text of Piers Plowman. The editors will be grateful for readers' suggestions and corrections. We have established the following web site to which users may send corrections, comments, or suggestions: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/seenet/piers/FAQ.html As a base of frequently-asked-questions comes into existence, we will post them and our responses on the SEENET site.

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