FENYX : ALTER THESAURUS SCRIPTORUM MUSICORUM

Within the treatises preselected according to chronological criteria, searches are carried out at the level of paragraphs, that is, the blocks of text which, in the original HTML code, are enclosed within <p>...</p> tags. Their length may vary considerably, depending on the editorial choices made by the original transcriber of each text.

Three search modes are available:

1. Search by one or more terms: enter one or more terms (alphanumeric character strings without punctuation marks or quotation marks), separated by spaces. Each term may optionally be followed by the wildcard *. The search will then return all paragraphs containing all specified terms (Boolean AND).

   Example:

   tonu* diapente

   returns all paragraphs containing both a word beginning with tonu and the complete word diapente.

2. Search by expression: enter a character string of arbitrary length, which may include spaces, and enclose it in double quotation marks. Only one expression is allowed per search, and wildcards are not permitted.

   Example:

   "tonum habeto"

   returns all paragraphs that contain the entered expression as a contiguous string.

3. Search by regular expression: this method, while more complex to implement, allows for a finer level of control over search queries than simpler techniques. To be interpreted as a regular expression by the search engine, the expression must be enclosed within two slashes: /expression/. The search operates at the level of individual words, and the syntax conforms to the XML Schema regular expression standard.

   Examples:

   /pros(a|am|ae|e|as|arum|is)/

   will match all morphological variants of the lemma prosa (including the medieval form prose), but it will not match prosaicus.

   /no[^t]a/

   demonstrates the use of character classes: it matches nona, nola, and nova, while deliberately excluding nota. In contrast, the expression

   /no.a/

   employs the dot (.) as a wildcard, thereby matching all of these words regardless of the intervening character. This approach highlights the flexibility of regular expressions in performing precise lexical searches, enabling the user to distinguish subtle orthographic or morphological variants that would otherwise be indistinguishable in standard string-based searches.

The results displayed on this page are limited to the relevant paragraphs, with the search terms or expressions highlighted. By clicking on the title of a treatise, users are taken to the /browse/ section, where the treatise is displayed in its entirety, with the relevant paragraph highlighted. The /browse/ and /search/ sections open in two separate browser tabs, making it possible to switch easily between them.