Spina, SalvatoreCampana, StefanoFerdani, DanieleGraf, HolgerGuidi, GabrieleHegarty, ZackaryPescarin, SofiaRemondino, Fabio2025-09-052025-09-052025978-3-03868-277-6https://doi.org/10.2312/dh.20253018https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/dh20253018Data, Big Data, Textual Analysis, and the Semantic Web are among the core concepts underpinning the digital turn. Everything becomes processable, and most objects are increasingly ''virtualized,'' shifting our experience of them away from their physical dimension. Words are transformed into data-entities, comparable to ''second-order abstractions'' (i.e., numbers) (Frege 2023; 1980), and as such they can be analyzed through algorithms capable of enhancing our knowledge. While this is certainly applicable to printed texts (which can be converted into machinereadable digital texts via OCR) and to ''born-digital'' content, the scenario changes when we consider the vast archival heritage composed of handwritten documents from various historical periods, characterized by highly diverse linguistic structures and forms of language-texts which currently resist large-scale computational analysis.Attribution 4.0 International License10.2312/dh.202530183 pages