Manuzio: An Object Language for Annotated Text Collections

Traditionally, text collections are represented as text files with some kind of markup to define extra-textual information, like metadata, annotations, etc. We propose an approach which uses the natural structure of a literary text to build specialized objects abstractions on text collections, objects which can be used to make non-hierarchically nested, multi-level annotations, to create complex metadata, and to perform complex queries and analysis on the collection. The language Manuzio is the result of this approach, and in this paper we introduce its main features, as well as the sketch of a system, based on the language, to manage persistent text collections and write complex applications over them.