The MARKUS platform has gone through a major update during the past few months. You can now create an account, upload content, add customized tags and comments and notes of different kinds, select which reference sites you want to display, convert Chinese to western dates, and, last but not least, import text directly from your ctext.org account. We have added new videos to show most of these features under “HowTo.” More will be added and Chinese translations of these will be added as well.
We continue to work on new features including machine learning, direct export from other databases, and visualizations of tagged content. Some features such as keyword tagging can be used for modern Chinese texts; we are interested in working with data providers to add more functionality for modern Chinese and other languages. Please get in touch with comments and suggestions.
As always we are much indebted to Brent Ho for the development of these features, to Gabe Geert van Beijeren Bergen en Henegouwen and Monica Klasing Chen for the English videos, and to Hueilan Xiong and Jialong Liu for the Chinese text of the videos. And, to Donald Sturgeon for adding export features to ctext.
A fuller list of new features appears below.
1. Chinese time references (nianhao and nianhao with years and months) are converted to western dates.
2. Custom tags and buttons can be added and will be saved to exported files or files saved to your account.
3. Comments and notes can be added to paragraphs, saved and exported.
4. Reference sites can be displayed according to user preferences.
5. Export now includes the option to include a range of characters in front of and following the tagged content.
6. Log in with a social media or personal account and upload files. Note that at this time the recommended file size is 4Mb or smaller.
7. Improvements to personal name markup.
8. When paragraph division is selected, structural markup for divisions is added which can be used when navigating the text or when exporting tagged content.
9. A plugin can be installed for users with a ctext.org account, allowing for immediate export of text chapters to MARKUS.
10. For those in Buddhist Studies, MARKUS also includes functionality to tag Chinese Buddhist person names and technical terms. The reference sites also include select Buddhist sites.
Go to http://dh.chinese-empires.eu/beta/ to try it out.