the Classical Text Editor

an attempt to provide for both printed and digital editions © Stefan Hagel www.oeaw.ac.at/kvk/cte

clarification

P. Robinson (2005) about tools for print editions: “Others are based on extensions of the Microsoft Word family of software: e.g. Imprimatur and the Classical Text Editor (CTE)” The CTE is • not based on MS Word • not devoted exclusively to print editions But…

the CTE digital impact factor

• over 500 licenses in about 250 projects • 4 are individual licenses for electronic editions → Less than 1% digital editors?

→ No institutional interest?

the reverse effect

• Little feedback about the digital export → Less programming effort dedicated to digital output

the goal

“ Our goal must be to ensure that any scholar able to make an edition in one medium should be able to make an edition in the other.” (P. Robinson) The CTE tries to implement the inclusive interpretation of this sentence.

software requirements

• • The aspect of output quality – The editor’s concentration must be devoted to scholarly questions – Changes must be easily made at any stage The digitalisation aspect – Editors must not be discouraged – The print edition may be crucial, if only for bureaucratic reasons → Creating a digital edition should be an additional option → Requirements: – Only one tool – Print and digital output – No code writing – Acceptable results with minimal technical expertise, but – Extensibility for advancing users

Manual Input

the CTE data flow model

Clipboard Text / Unicode Text Rich Text Format Macro pre processing

CTE PDF

XSLT …

the strategy

Luring the traditional editor into publishing also an electronic version

the sacrifice

“Fundamental to the model of electronic scholarly edition as it has developed over the past decade is the inclusion of full transcripts of all witnesses to the text.” (P. Robinson) But: scholars who don’t set out for a digital edition from the start don’t care about a machine-readable critical apparatus.

Advantage: the electronic edition will contain a human-readable apparatus.

examples

please find the examples on the CD

• • Unchanged XML/TEI output from CTE files (without additional tagging) Formatted merely by CSS and → easily re-useable templates JavaScript 1. optimized for MS Internet Explorer • formatting done programmatically • Notes and margins can be turned off and on [view with standard browser] 2. optimized for Opera • Opera 8 [view with standard browser] „Dynamic“ CSS formatting: notes by mouse action / margins Opera 9 [view with standard browser] • • Synchronization of several versions Location search works around the Opera 9 CSS overflow:visible bug

conclusion: possible environments

Technical expert scholar

– low-level tools – creative solutions – needs time for programming • would perhaps use a program like the CTE for large texts, to modify the output by stylesheet languages or programmatically

Average scholar

– all-in-one tool – ready-made templates – concentrates on texts • the typical CTE user

Working group

• scholars prepare their contributions with a high level tool like the CTE • technical expert collects and prepares for publication