Open Source Shakespeare 2.0 released

I wanted to call attention to the latest official release of Open Source Shakespeare. The new functions and changes listed below have been phased in over the last few months, and the site has a stable “build” right now, so I’m going to call it version 2.0.
SEARCH FUNCTION
• Stemming option: You may search for word stems as well as keywords.
Thus a search for “play” will find “plays,” “playing,” “played,” etc.
• Phonetic option: Words are converted into phonetic values, which are
then located in the texts. Searching for “their” will also turn up
“they’re” and “there.”
• Print/save version: Clicking on this link will give you a simple
version of the search results, suitable for printing or saving onto your
hard drive.
• Search results browsing: For searches that return lots of results, you
can view them page-by-page, instead of viewing all results at once.
• Help function on the advanced search page: Each element of the search
page is explained.
• Conjunction labels changed: instead of the Boolean “and/or” functions,
you may use “find” or “not.” The former includes a keyword in the
search, and the latter excludes results based on keywords.
• Results formatting: You can remove the keyword highlighting in the
search results. Also, you can display 10 to 100 results at a time, and
opt to hide the line text in each result.
PLAY DISPLAY
• Print/save version: There is a link at the top of every text
displayed, which will show the text in a version suitable for saving or
printing.
• Navigation aids: There are jumps to the previous and next scene/act
changes at the top of the page, and at the beginning and end of every scene.
• Quotations on “please wait” notice: Instead of showing a generic
message asking a user to wait while the server works, there are now
rotated quotations, too.
OTHER CHANGES
• Quick links to all works are shown on left side of home page.
• There is a new statistics page.
• I added a list of all the characters.
• …or you can also use a search box to search for a character.
• Actors will find this useful — they will be able to show how their
cue lines
and thus memorize their dialogue more easily.

5 comments

  1. Eric,
    Congratulations from me too. But does it really meet the definition of Open Source if commercial enterprises aren’t allowed to-oh, never mind. Lets not go there again. Anyway, good work! :-)

  2. Actually, the intelligence community defines “open source” as any information that can be collected outside of traditional intelligence collection (surveillance, wiretapping, etc.), so as a public site on the World Wide Web, it qualifies as open source under that definition.
    Nyaah! ;)

  3. I love William Shakespeare. You weren’t only spreading freedom and democracy in Iraq, you were helping to spread Western Civilization. I think Lynn Cheney and Laura Bush would be proud of you. Good job.

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