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The advent of ever-larger and more diverse historical corpora for different historical periods and linguistic varieties has led to the impossibility of obtaining simple, direct-and yet balancedrepresentations of the core patterns in the data. In order to draw insights from heterogeneous and complex materials of this type, historical linguists have begun to reach for a growing number of data visualisation techniques, from the statistical, to the cartographical, the network-based and beyond. An exploration of the state of this art was the objective of a workshop at the 2018 International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, from whence most of the materials of this Special Issue are drawn. This brief introductory paper outlines the background and relevance of this line of methodological research and presents a summary of the individual papers that make up the collection.

We have modified a recently developed reflectometer so that surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing is now possible. Thus, the complex refractive index of liquids can be obtained at a desired wavelength (the existing setup allows the use of the visible-NIR spectral range) using both the SPR and conventional measurement modes of the reflectometer. The multifunction operation of the present apparatus offers possibilities for off- and on-line industrial inspection of liquids.

The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. This study shows that the strategies employed in the Middle English period are very different from the strategies in the Early Modern English period: the use of second-person pronouns and imperatives prevails in the Middle English period, whereas the use of first-person pronouns was preferred in the Early Modern English period. In addition to this, another division, irrespective of the time of writing, is observed in the material: the first group includes handbooks and practical herbals, and the other group learned and empirical herbals. Factors which explain these differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.

The dispersion theory of nonlinear Bruggeman liquids is investigated by using the effective medium theory of nanocomposites. It is shown that the complex effective degenerate third-order Bruggeman susceptibility, which is a meromorphic function, does not obey conventional Kramers–Kronig relations. A maximum entropy procedure is applied for the first time in a phase-retrieval from nonlinear total reflectance.

The reflectance from industrial pulping solutions was investigated with the use of a reflectometer. It was observed that the reflectance is time-dependent on the contamination of the probe window. The optical constants of the pulping solutions were calculated by using Fresnel's theory and the concept of critical angle. A simple mathematical model, based on the random contamination of the probe window, was observed to yield satisfactory agreement between the measurement and theory of reflectance. It is proposed that optical constants of pulping solutions can be estimated despite the contaminated layer on the prism face.

A method is proposed to analyze the preferred Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) of printing medium like paper for the image quality of printing. First, the spectral intensity distribution of printed image is simulated by changing the MTF of medium. Next, the simulated image is displayed on a high-precision LCD to reproduce the appearance of printed image. An observer rating evaluation experiment is carried out to the displayed image to discuss what the preferred MTF is. The appearance simulation of printed image was conducted on particular printing conditions: several contents, ink colors, a halftoning method and a print resolution (dpi). The experiments on different printing conditions can be conducted since our simulation method is flexible about changing conditions.