In this talk I cover the use of Perl for some humanistic (and occasionally, arguably, artistic) pursuits: that is, investigating medieval history and the texts that carry that history. Alongside the sorts of war stories that cropped up in the medieval Near East, I'll share my experiences writing software in a land where development almost always stops with the demo.

1. War Stories
Programming in the field of Medieval History
Tara L Andrews (@tla)
Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Bern

6. How do we write history?

11. Matthew of
Edessa
He went through the wars.
And then his text did, too.

22. Interlude:
A fragile history

26. package Text::Tradition::Collation::Data;
use Moose;
use Graph;
use Text::Tradition::Datatypes;
has 'sequence' => (
is => 'ro',
isa => 'Graph',
default => sub { Graph->new() },
handles => {
paths => 'edges',
},
);
has 'relations' => (
is => 'ro',
isa => 'Text::Tradition::Collation::RelationshipStore',
handles => {
relationships => 'relationships',
related_readings => 'related_readings',
get_relationship => 'get_relationship',
del_relationship => 'del_relationship',
equivalence => 'equivalence',
equivalence_graph => 'equivalence_graph',
relationship_types => 'types'
},
writer => '_set_relations',
);

28. package Text::Tradition::Directory;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Moose;
use DBI;
use Encode qw/ encode decode_utf8 /;
use KiokuDB::GC::Naive;
use KiokuDB::TypeMap;
use KiokuDB::TypeMap::Entry::Naive;
use Safe::Isa;
use Text::Tradition::Error;
## users
use KiokuX::User::Util qw(crypt_password);
use Text::Tradition::Store;
use Text::Tradition::User;
use Text::Tradition::TypeMap::Entry;
extends 'KiokuX::Model';
use vars qw/ $VERSION /;
$VERSION = "1.2";
=head1 NAME
Text::Tradition::Directory - a KiokuDB interface for storing and retrieving
traditions and their owners
=head1 SYNOPSIS

29. [warn] leaked objects:
.--------------------------------------------------------------+----------.
| Class | Count |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+----------+
| Text::Tradition::Collation::Data | 1 |
'--------------------------------------------------------------+----------'
[warn] leaked objects:
.--------------------------------------------------------------+----------.
| Class | Count |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+----------+
| Text::Tradition::Collation::Data | 1 |
'--------------------------------------------------------------+----------'
[warn] leaked objects:
.--------------------------------------------------------------+----------.
| Class | Count |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+----------+
| Text::Tradition::Collation::Data | 6 |
'--------------------------------------------------------------+----------'
[warn] leaked objects:
.--------------------------------------------------------------+----------.
| Class | Count |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+----------+
| Text::Tradition::Collation::Data | 1 |
'--------------------------------------------------------------+----------'
[warn] leaked objects:
.--------------------------------------------------------------+----------.
| Class | Count |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+----------+
| Text::Tradition::Collation::Data | 6 |
'--------------------------------------------------------------+----------'
[error] Caught exception in stemmaweb::Controller::Relation->main "Cannot allocate
memory during fork at /usr/local/share/perl/5.18.2/Text/Tradition/Collation.pm line
976."

30. Testing. A cute idea.
Mac-c8e0eb150215:base tla$ prove -l t/*.t
t/00dependencies.t .............................. ok
t/01app.t ....................................... ok
t/02pod.t ....................................... ok
t/03podcoverage.t ............................... skipped: set TEST_POD to enable this test
t/text_tradition.t .............................. ok
t/text_tradition_collation.t .................... ok
t/text_tradition_collation_relationshipstore.t .. ok
t/text_tradition_parser_collatex.t .............. ok
t/text_tradition_parser_json.t .................. ok
t/text_tradition_parser_self.t .................. ok
t/text_tradition_parser_tabular.t ............... ok
t/text_tradition_parser_tei.t ................... ok
t/text_tradition_witness.t ...................... ok
All tests successful.
Files=13, Tests=556, 43 wallclock secs ( 0.10 usr 0.03 sys + 40.60 cusr 1.12 csys = 41.85 CPU)
Result: PASS

31. Digital Humanities tenure submission

33. Textual criticism
A war of methodology

41. Interlude #2:
We really have problems.

44. use strict;
use warnings;
use feature ‘say’;
use WWW::Google::Places;
my $api_key = 's33kr1t';
my $place = WWW::Google::Places->new({ api_key =>
$api_key });
# Google search place
my @results = $place->textsearch({ query => $ARGV[0] });
foreach (reverse @results) {
say "Id : ", $_->place_id;
say "Name : ", $_->name;
say "Types : ", join(", ", @{$_->types});
say "Geometry: ", $_->geometry;
say "Icon : ", $_->icon;
say "Vicinity: ", $_->vicinity;
say "Scope : ", $_->scope;
say "----------------------------------------";
}

45. ----------------------------------------
Id : ChIJsX7lyvNMSIgRVXRTNgaDlb0
Name : Gihon Elementary School
Types : school, point_of_interest, establishment
Geometry: Location: Latitude: 39.234044, Longitude:
-81.552035
Icon : https://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/place_api/icons/
generic_business-71.png
Vicinity: N/A
Scope : GOOGLE
----------------------------------------
Id : ChIJRUzmdd7J5YgR0aKaqFXMhLI
Name : Shorstein, Lasnetski, & Gihon
Types : lawyer, point_of_interest, establishment
Geometry: Location: Latitude: 30.254356, Longitude:
-81.627089
Icon : https://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/place_api/icons/
generic_business-71.png
Vicinity: N/A
Scope : GOOGLE
----------------------------------------
Id : ChIJYbwjTt06K4gRuKL-IX6oTy0
Name : Gihon Spring Park
Types : park, point_of_interest, establishment
Geometry: Location: Latitude: 43.754475, Longitude:
-79.594406
Icon : https://maps.gstatic.com/mapfiles/place_api/icons/
generic_business-71.png
Vicinity: N/A
Scope : GOOGLE

47. Art or
engineering?
Skirmishes on the place of
creativity

51. Thank you!
¡Grácias!