TAPoR Version 1.0

Information for First Time Users

• Fill out a Survey on the Portal. Fill out a 15 minutes online survey to help us improve the portal and better meet research needs.

• Analyze texts and let others analyze the tests you make public.

• TAPoR Training includes a video tutorial on the portal by Geoffrey Rockwell.

TAPoR Public Release 2

Information for Testers and First Time Users

Some starting points

• What is the TAPoR portal?

• TAPoR Portal Tour

• TAPoR Portal Tutorial A tutorial that walks you through using the portal.

• Portal Recipes (Ways of using the portal, an ongoing project!)

• TAPoR Portal Credits recognizes those who have worked on the TAPoR Portal.

More Information: Table of Contents

• Tools that operate on HTML will have trouble with bad HTML, pages that redirect to other pages, or with large files. Try the tools first with small web pages under 100K.

In Depth Testing

TAPoR Public Release 2 - Information for Testers and First Time Users

Announcing the release 2 of the TAPoR Portal. This version has all the planned functionality (and then some) including:

• Define a library of texts you want to study. Share your texts by making them public.
• Select tools that others have registered and try them on your texts.
• Manage news channels (RSS feeds) and public texts for the digital humanities community.

TAPoR needs your help with testing and improving the interface. Get a free account for the portal and experiment. Use the Report a problem / make a suggestion feature in the Help panel on every page to report issues.

More Information; Table of Contents

Some known problems

• The tools are Web Services that come from other servers. We cannot vouch for all of them. Sometimes they go down or are changed. Note that the portal is just a broker for the tools.
• Tools that operate on HTML will have trouble with bad HTML or with large files. Try the tools first with small web pages under 100K.
• When adding texts or tools to your Library you may have to Reload the page to see them in the list.
• Some of the documentation reflects an earlier version, we are upgrading it. Likewise we haven't upgraded the language skins.

Features to try, ways to help us

• Get an account and experiment.
• Try defining texts in the myTexts area that are public so that you can share texts with others.
• Try the different tools on documents you know to see if they are working the way you expect.
• Try some of the TAPoR Portal Recipes which guide you through different text analysis strategies.
• Fill out the Survey once you have tried the portal and send it to us.

More Information; People to contact

• For more information on the project see www.tapor.ca.
• For the TAPoR home page on the TADA wiki with useful links see TAPoR on TADA.

For direct contact try:

• Lian Yan, lyan (at) mcmaster (dot) ca, for account issues including upgrading to an advanced account.
• James Chartrand, chartra (at) mcmaster (dot) ca, with bugs or problems (James gets the problem reports.)
• Geoffrey Rockwell, georock (at) mcmaster (dot) ca, with ideas or questions about the project.
• Stéfan Sinclair, sgs (at) mcmaster (dot) ca, with ideas, tool developer questions, or questions about the project.

Tool Developers, Help Us

If you are a tool developer you should join the Text Analysis Developers Alliance. We can give you a portal account so that you can register your tools in the portal for others to use if they can be configured as web services. Contact Stéfan Sinclair, sgs (at) mcmaster (dot) ca.

In Depth Testing

• Getting and account and logging in.
• Adding texts to the myText area. Using the TAPoRize feature for adding texts.
• Creating a list of public texts for the myLinks area. Your public texts can be viewed by anyone on a page automatically generated and others can use that list to search your public texts and analyze them.
• Test the Analyze Text feature with different texts.
• Entering information into the Research Log. Try saving results from text analysis processes to the Research Log.
• Try the Workbench where you can
  • Adding Tools to your myTools library
  • Use a Tool on a Text
  • Save results to the databench to reuse with another tool.
• Using different tools. Try different tools in the TAPoR Tools collection.

TAPoR Preview Release - Information for Testers and First Time Users

Things to try

• The Welcome (Home) page without logging in. Try searching for a tool and using it.
• Logging in.
• Adding texts to the myText area.
• Analyze Text
• Entering information into the Research Log
• myLinks
• Workbench
  • Adding Tools to your myTools library
  • Running a Tool on a Text
  • Saving results to the databench
• Using different tools
• Experimenting with skins and news in myPreferences

-- GeoffreyRockwell - 25 Oct 2006