nederhof / isut

Tool for collaborative annotation and computational analysis of hieratic texts

Isut

Tool for collaborative annotation and computational analysis of hieratic texts.

By Mark-Jan Nederhof, Julius Tabin and Christian Casey.

Installation

MongoDB

On Linux, MongoDB is typically installed with:

sudo apt install mongodb-org

MongoDB is typically started up with:

sudo systemctl start mongod

For now, we assume MongoDB is run without authentication, but see below if it is run with.

Python

On Linux, the relevant Python packages are typically installed with:

pip3 install bcrypt
pip3 install numpy
pip3 install Pillow
pip3 install pymongo
pip3 install scikit-learn-extra
pip3 install umap-learn

(On some platforms it is pip rather than pip3.)

Node.js

On Linux, Node.js and nodemon are typically installed with:

sudo apt install npm
sudo npm install -g nodemon

The relevant modules of Isut are now installed with:

cd src
npm install

Find out how Python3 is called on your machine. If it is not python3, then adjust routes/util.js:

const python = 'python3';

Local use

In routes/util.js there should be:

const online = false;

Configure

(Only needed if you want to create or edit texts and want your username to be recorded in the edit history of those texts.)

Choose a username for yourself in place of noname, and adjust routes/util.js:

const defaultUser = 'noname';

Running

Call:

nodemon

If all is well, the output will typically include something like:

Listening on 3000
Database opened

Now direct the browser to:

http://localhost:3000/isut

Loading and annotating texts

In the application, you can load the existing annotated texts from backups/.

Regrettably PeasantB1.zip had to be split up due to GitHub's file size limit. To reconstruct it, do:

cd ../backups
cat PeasantB1Part* > PeasantB1.zip

You can also create your own annotated texts. Before doing your own annotation, the OCR functionality needs to be initialized on the basis of a number of annotated texts that were already loaded into the application. This is done by:

python3 python/prepare.py

It may be worth repeating this once many more annotated texts have been added to the application.

Backups

You can make backups of the texts currently in the database by:

python3 python/backups.py

The texts will be stored as zip files in backups/. Note that this will not replace any existing files, so you need to empty the contents of backups/ first, or move the files elsewhere.

Deployment on the web

In routes/util.js there should be:

const online = true;

MongoDB

It is now preferable to run MongoDB with authentication. For this, choose a username and password for general maintenance of MongoDB databases in place of myusername and mypassword. (Avoid spaces in usernames and passwords.) Then do:

mongosh
use admin
db.createUser({
	user: "myusername",
	pwd: "mypassword",
	roles: ["root"]
})
exit
sudo systemctl stop mongod

Then make /etc/mongod.conf (or a MongoDB configuration file elsewhere, depending on your distribution) contain:

security: 
  authorization: "enabled"

and do:

sudo systemctl start mongod

To give Isut access to MongoDB, choose a fresh password in place of isutpassword. Now do:

mongosh -u myusername -p mypassword
use admin
db.createUser({ 
	user: "isutuser", 
	pwd: "isutpassword",
	roles: [{ role: "readWrite" , db: "isut" }]
})

In nodemon.json adjust two lines to become:

	"MONGO_USERNAME": "isutuser",
	"MONGO_PASSWORD": "isutpassword"

In python/database.py adjust two lines to become:

username='isutuser'
password='isutpassword'

Salt

To choose a fresh salt value, run:

python3 python/salt.py

Make a note of the output value. Adjust python/salt.py to have something like:

SALT = b'$2b$12$1YY2jpXLYKi1JPqch5nxee'

And adjust routes/salt.js to have something like:

const SALT = '$2b$12$1YY2jpXLYKi1JPqch5nxee';

User administration

Choose a username and password for yourself, and give yourself editor permissions with:

python3 python/addeditor.py -u <username> -p <password> -n "<name>"

replacing the <username>, <password> and <name> by appropriate strings. Avoid spaces in username and password.

Running

Much as above, call:

nodemon

If end users can access the application at:

https://mydomain.com/isut

then you can log in as editor with the chosen credentials at:

https://mydomain.com/isut/admin/login

After logging in, user administration can be done via the web interface.

Experiments

The experiments reported at Binsen-Weisheiten V (Mainz, April 11-13 2024) use the code in:

cd experiments