We have released a new version of the demo. Much of the change is in styling and branding, but there are new texts added, some new views, and a new naming convention.

New texts. Gradually, I am replacing the sample files with just Bava Metsi’a Ch. 2 with transcriptions covering all of tractate Neziqin (the Bavot). Currently, this applies to the Maimonides autograph, Paris BNF Héb. 328-329, and the Naples editio princeps (with the marginalia from the copy in the National Library of Israel.) Work is ongoing on other witnesses. Some new Genizah fragments have been added, and, in the next release, I hope to be able to show some samples of virtually joined manuscripts that can be broken out into the individual fragments.

New views. Users can now browse through documents page by page or column by column, and they can see witnesses chunked by chapter in a compact view.

New naming convention. Sigla for the manuscripts will now be based on the recent Thesaurus of Talmudic Manuscripts. Print editions will be based on serial numbers in similar format. We are experimenting with a convention for sigla that is slightly more informative, so that it will be possible to tell that a given witness includes the Mishnah alone, or a commentary in Hebrew or Arabic, and perhaps other data such as region and date of hand. (This last will require expert typing of the manuscripts.)

Hayim Lapin is Robert H. Smith Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. He currently is completing a faculty fellowship at MITH. This post originally appeared at Digital Mishnah on February 23, 2013.