A friend has sent me this set of instructions on how to use the Diogenes software with the TLG. Apparently this has a really nice look-and-feel interface.
1: Go to Edit, Preferences, and under “Location of TLG database” I put the location as this “c:\tlg/” or wherever I had stored the TLG in my computer. Click save settings.
2: Go to the main page on Diogenes and under Corpus select “TLG texts”
3: Under Action select “Browse to a specific passage in a given text” and then under “query” type in the first few letters of the author you are interested in finding. This is the Latin name so the complete English spelling will likely come up with nothing. A list will come up with either one author or the names of multiple authors. Select the author you want. A list will come up with their works. Select the work you want. Now you may enter the book and chapter numbers. Enter zeros to view the beginning of the work. Now you can browse the work. If you click the word in the work Diogenes will parse it and find the dictionary’s definition. Pretty neat.
4: To run a TLG search go back to the homepage. Under action choose “search the TLG”. Then under “query” type in a Greek word using unicode font. This will attempt to match this word with that TLG database.
One more thing, under the homepage for Diogenes you can select “search for conjunctions and multiple words” I find it best if you search for only one word and then add on another word after the second screen pops up.
I am told that TLG FAQ on its website claims that the TLG CD was never sold and that no one should have it now, even libraries, so its risky even saying that you have access to the CD E because to them you shouldn’t. As a humble member of the public, I most certainly don’t have a copy. But I post these instructions, just in case some scumbag somewhere is still making use of an ‘illegal’ CD, and hasn’t been reported to the police yet.
If anyone does know someone with a CD, I hope that every reader will most certainly denounce them to the police. If you are at school, and you discover that your father or mother has a copy, you should denounce them likewise.
This may seem harsh, but it’s the only way to curb the criminal element among classicists and to build a better world. Mind how you go.
The TLG E disk is available as a rare torrent…
I really like Diogenes and never returned to Pandora. But you know, I only use the dictionary.
Interestingly Diogenes comes with a file containing Liddell and Scott in XML format.
Including also the Lewis-Short Latin dictionary. Very helpful.
Thank you for that article,that would certainly help me gain a lot of time in my researches, not that I have any use of it since I don’t own a TLG cd, which goes without saying.
🙂
A few months ago, I installed Diogenes on a Windows XP laptop. I did not need to specify the location of the TLG or PHI databases, and it works just fine offline.
Now I’ve installed it on a second Windows 7 laptop, and it wants me to specify the location of the databases. I’ve tried inputting the location of all the large files in the Diogenes program folders, but none of them works. Nor is the database location given on the http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.heslin website.
Does anyone know the location of the TLG and PHI databases?
Ah, now I feel stupid. I did not have the action set to “Parse the inflection…”. (I am using Diogenes as an offline morphological tool, not to search the databases.)
In case anyone else is reading this someday, here are some further setup instructions.
Latin doesn’t require anything special.
For Greek, you do NOT need to input the text in Greek. You can input Latinic text with diacritical marks indicated by parentheses, etc., just as in the old version of Perseus (which essentially parallels SPIonic). To input Greek this way, go to Diogenes’ current settings and choose Beta.
Additionally, I have my Greek Output Encoding set to UTF-8. Thus, my results come out in Greek instead of transliterated into English with macrons. (In case it’s helpful, I also have SPIonic installed on my computer, but I don’t think that is relevant here.)
Thanks for these updates! They may well help others. If you found this problem, others may also!
Thank you for the “diogenes” and thank you for this article. Of course, as all the others, i don’t have the TLG cd either.
But in case a copy come to my possession, in what way i should search for a word in only one of the texts?
?
It’s ages since I used Diogenes. I’m really sorry, but I don’t know.
I followed the directions, put the locations in the preferences etc., however when I click Go in the query I get an alert:”Database error; Database not found… “. Then it opens a dialog to identify the database folder, but after I do so, I again get an alert that no TLG/… database was found. I startedhaving this problem when I changed to a 64-bit hard drive (with Windows 7). Any ideas?
Sorry, there should have been some error in the initial copying of the files in the new hard drive. I copied again the files from the DVD and now it’s OK 🙂