Seeing the text: program visualization for text analysis in the humanities
Patricia Monger, Geoffrey Rockwell · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1999
In this paper we will discuss a prototype visual programming environment for text applications called Eye-ConTact. Eye- ConTact is modeled on scientific visualization systems such as NAG's ExplorerTM. The user creates a flow chart of how the 'experiment' on a text is to be conducted. The map of this flow of data allows the researcher to see the logic of the study of a text and then reproduce such studies with other texts, or alter the analysis. To adapt the visual programming model to the community of textual scholars, the program must be usable and extendable by a community with limited resources for computing, and not entirely convinced that computationally-based research is relevant. The 'keep it simple' injunction is crucial in such a project. Furthermore, there are no defined or de facto standards for data formats or data representations in this community. We will discuss the original (1997) prototype. Feedback from demonstrations led to changes to the programming interface, and the underlying text analysis engine, in order to make the former more indicative of the steps in the analysis process, and the latter more portable and extensible. We will discuss the design decisions we made to address these two issues.