This is a contribution primarily to the ongoing discussion of textual collation in COST Action A32 ("Open Scholarly Communities on the Web")

This is a contribution primarily to the ongoing discussion of textual collation in COST Action A32 ("Open Scholarly Communities on the Web"). It discusses requirements for instruments of electronic collation both for purposes of textual criticism and for critically interpretative work with literary, philosophical, historical etc. texts, and teaching. The existing tools it refers to are the collation module in the TUSTEP package of procedures for text data processing developed in Tübingen (Germany); the tool JuXta within the NINES/Collex system from ARP (Applied Research in Patacriticism) at the University of Virginia; and the collation tool CASE created for Peter Shillingsburg's Thackeray edition. In terms of principles, these tools are measured against fundamental requirements for collation; in terms of pragmatics, they are also looked at for potential integration into the infrastructure design for a research platform on the web that, at the time of writing, bore the name HYPER and has meanwhile been re-designed as TALIA.