RESOURCE: User's guide for the use of TACL software

Michael Radich Discussion

Dear colleagues,

Over the past four years, my programmer colleague, Jamie Norrish, and I have been developing TACL, a suite of free computer tools to assist in the anaysis of digitised Chinese Buddhist texts. I have now written a guide to the use of TACL in application to typical research questions, and made it available here:

http://dazangthings.nz/tacl-guide/

I hope that interested readers of this list will read the guide and consider how they might apply these tools in their own work.

The guide supplements, but does not replace, the TACL documentation here:

http://pythonhosted.org/tacl/

The code for TACL itself is always up to date and freely available here:

https://github.com/ajenhl/tacl

We encourage not only use of the code, but modification of it; the code is entirely open.

In their present state of development, the tools must be run from the command line. Further, the data they produce can be copious, and usually requires significant investment of time to analyse. These tools are no quick-fix or magic wand, therefore, but I believe it should be possible to get up and running with them in a matter of days rather than weeks. I am always happy --- keen, in fact --- to help scholars interested in the possibiliity of applying TACL to their work.

A list of research publications to date using TACL-assisted methods may be found in the guide.

Thank you for your attention,

Michael Radich

Dr Michael Radich, Associate Professor  
Programme Director
Religious Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
Room 207, 14 Kelburn Parade
ph:(64 4) 463 9477
Fax: (64 4) 463 5065
michael.radich@vuw.ac.nz