Text-Fabric is a model for textual data with annotations that is optimized for efficient data analysis. Not only that, it also facilitates the creation of new, derived data, which can be added to the original data. Data combination is a feature of Text-Fabric.
Text-Fabric is being used for the Hebrew Bible and a large body of linguistic annotations on top of it. The researchers of the ETCBC thought that a plain database is not a satisfactory text model, and that XML is too limited too express multiple hierarchies in a text smoothly.
That's why they adopted a model by Doedens that reflects more of the essential properties of text (sequence, embedding). This model is the basis of MQL, a working text-database system. Text-Fabric is based on the same model, and once the data is in Text-Fabric, it can be exported to MQL.
See more on the effort of modelling the Hebrew Bible in Dirk's article The Hebrew Bible as Data: Laboratory - Sharing - Experiences
With data in Text-Fabric, it becomes possible to build rich online interfaces on the data of ancient texts. For the Hebrew Bible, we have built SHEBANQ.
Working with TF is a bit like buying from IKEA. You get your product in bits and pieces, and you assemble it yourself. TF decomposes any dataset into its components, nicely stacked per component, with every component uniquely labeled. You go to the store, make your selection, enter the warehouse, collect your parts, and, at home, assemble your product.
In order to enjoy an IKEA product, you do not need to be a craftsman, but you do need to be able to handle a screw driver.
In the TF world, it is the same. You do not have to be a professional programmer, but you do need to be able to program little things. A first course in Python is enough.
Another parallel: in IKEA you take a package with components home, and there you assemble it. In TF it is likewise: you download the TF data, and then you write a little program. Inside that program you can call up the Text-Fabric tool, which act as the IKEA user manual. But your program takes control, not Text-Fabric.
The best environment to enjoy Text-Fabric is in Python programs that you develop in a Jupyter Notebook. This tutorial is such a notebook. If you are reading it online, you see text bits and code bits, but you cannot execute the code bits.
Chances are that a bit of reading about the underlying data model helps you to follow the exercises below, and vice versa.
Start here.