No source, born digital.
Contributions to Contemporary History is one of the central Slovenian scientific historiographic journals, dedicated to publishing articles from the field of contemporary history (the 19th and 20th century).
The journal is published three times per year in Slovenian and in the following foreign languages: English, German, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Italian, Slovak and Czech. The articles are all published with abstracts in English and Slovenian as well as summaries in English.
Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino je ena osrednjih slovenskih znanstvenih zgodovinopisnih revij, ki objavlja teme s področja novejše zgodovine (19. in 20. stoletje).
Revija izide trikrat letno v slovenskem jeziku in v naslednjih tujih jezikih: angleščina, nemščina, srbščina, hrvaščina, bosanščina, italijanščina, slovaščina in češčina. Članki izhajajo z izvlečki v angleščini in slovenščini ter povzetki v angleščini.
Prispevek izhaja iz stališča, da je pri digitalnih izdajah
potrebno poskrbeti za čim bolj celovito digitalno trajnost tako podatkov kot
prezentacij, funkcionalnosti in programske kode. To je velik izziv predvsem
za manjše digitalno humanistične projekte z omejenim financiranjem, ki ne
omogoča dolgoročnega vzdrževanja tehnično zahtevnih digitalnih izdaj. Kot
alternativno rešitev so v prispevku predstavljene rešitve, ki jih v zadnjih
letih ponuja hiter razvoj statičnih spletnih strani. Digitalne izdaje, ki
temeljijo na TEI, so s pomočjo osnovnih XML (XSLT) in spletnih tehnologij
(HTML, CSS, JavaScript) kot statične spletne strani uspešno vključene v
repozitorij portala SIstory. Vse statične spletne strani imajo tudi možnost
dinamičnega prikazovanja vsebine.
Ključne besede: digitalne izdaje, digitalno kuratorstvo, TEI,
XSLT, statične spletne strani
The contribution is based on the position that, with regard to
digital editions, the highest possible degree of digital sustainability of
data, presentations, functionalities, and programme code should be ensured.
This represents a significant challenge, especially in case of smaller
digital humanities projects with limited financing, which does not allow for
the long-term maintenance of technically-demanding digital editions. The
alternative solutions facilitated by the swift development of static
websites in the recent years are presented in the contribution. Digital
editions based on the TEI have been successfully included in the SIstory
portal repository as static websites, employing basic XML (XSLT) and web
technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). All the static websites also have the
possibility of displaying dynamic content.
Keywords: digital editions, digital curation, TEI, XSLT, static
website
In digital humanities, the awareness of the importance of digital sustainability and permanent preservation of digital sources has been present for a long time (Schaffner and Erway 2014, 7). The research data of an individual project usually outlives the project in the context of which it has been collected, organised, and published. Therefore it is very important to ensure a high-quality and sustainable storage of digital data even after the project itself has been concluded.
In the recent years, the technical aspects of research data management and long-term archiving (metadata, archive formats, preservation media, and documentation) have been the subject of intensive discussions. Only lately, however, have we begun to realise that the preservation of data in accordance with the specific requirements of various scientific disciplines is almost more important for the high-quality management and reuse of this data (Moeller et al. 2018). While in the natural and social sciences the data from measurements and questionnaires is typically used, in the humanities the use of cultural objects like manuscripts, texts, pictures, and recordings is predominant. Moreover, researchers in humanities will usually additionally process, visualise, tag, link, and interpret digital cultural objects (DHd-AG Datenzentren 2017, 7).
Such data processing is particularly important in case of digital editions, which are a crucial part of digital humanities (Andorfer et al. 2016). Naturally, digital scholarly editions mostly consist of the research in the context of which different transcriptions, indications, analyses, explanations, etc., are produced. Such research data in particular should therefore be available to the research community in the long term and under open access conditions (Robinson 2016). In the case of digital editions, the encoded text is the most crucial long-term result of the project. The display of information is vital as well, as it represents the outlook of the project group on this information in the context of a certain application. However, it is not that every such outlook is unique in any way or even the only one possible. Instead, this information can be displayed in a variety of ways (Turska et al. 2016). With each new interpretation, the number of other potential user interfaces even increases. Each such presentation is thus a new research result that deserves long-term storage as well.
Therefore, research results in humanities consist not only of research data, but also of the presentation environment and the applications that enable data interpretation, searching, filtering, browsing, and linking (DHd-AG Datenzentren 2017, 7). If we only stored research data, the initial presentation would be lost forever, even though the presentation represents an integral part of any digital edition (Fechner 2018). At the same time, we should not forget that the programming code used for the creation of digital editions is an integral part of the scientific argumentation as well, just like the digital editions (Andrews and Zundert 2016).
Sustainable storage of digital editions therefore represents a particularly significant challenge. Moreover, digital editions can be very different from each other in terms of their contents, appearance, and functionality. They mostly result from specific research projects with relatively limited financial and human resources at their disposal. As the project group members come from the field of humanities, they often lack the suitable technical expertise, which is why they mostly need to rely on external contractors when it comes to technical development. Furthermore, digital editions depend on the very swift development of online technologies and standards (Andorfer et al. 2016).
As the number of digital editions increases rapidly, the challenges involved in
the sustainable storage of digital editions will only become greater in the
future (Fechner 2018). In case of smaller
digital humanities projects with limited financing, which does not allow for the
long-term maintenance of technically-demanding digital editions, this represents
a significant challenge and will continue to do so. In the continuation, I will
present alternative solutions offered by the rapid development of static
websites. In the recent years, static websites have become one of the main
online development trends. It appears that this trend will also persist in the
future (Williams 2019). In the present
contribution, I will present the experience gained by generating static websites
for the digital editions in the context of the activities of the Research
Infrastructure of Slovenian Historiography, which, among other tasks, also
manages the History of Slovenia – SIstory web portal.History of Slovenia – SIstory, accessed April 15,
2019, http://www.sistory.si/publikacije/?menuBottom=2.
In the chapter Modern Static Websites, I will first
present the main advantages and disadvantages of this type of websites. In our
case, we have decided to upgrade the basic XSLT Stylesheets of the TEI
Consortium. In the SIstory TEI Profile chapter, I will
present generic upgrade of the TEI Stylesheets. In the chapter Configuring and Upgrading the SIstory TEI Profile I will outline the
project-specific options for upgrading this profile. In both these chapters, I
will also discuss the various options of adding dynamic contents to static
websites. In the chapter Publishing Digital Editions I
will outline how these static websites can be made available to the public, in
particular by their inclusion in the SIstory portal's digital repository. In the
Conclusion, I will also mention a few more general
findings.
All websites used to be static at first, which is why all of the digital editions
in the field of digital humanities were initially created as static HTML
websites. This was also true in case of the Slovenian scholarly digital editions
(Ogrin and Erjavec 2009),Scholarly Digital Editions of Slovenian Literature,
eZISS, accessed April 15, 2019, http://nl.ijs.si/e-zrc/index-en.html.
By that point, the internet had been, for a long time already, dominated by dynamic websites that had successfully replaced the outdated static websites, where the contents could only be altered by the developers directly editing the HTML code. By means of content management systems (e.g. the very popular WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla), dynamic websites have finally made it possible for technically unskilled users to start publishing on the internet.
The contents of dynamic websites are stored in databases. The server does not construct the contents until the user demands that a website be displayed, adapted to the demands of the user. A suitable programming language is used to communicate with the server. The biggest problem of such dynamic websites is that its technical solutions are often more complicated than the actual needs of their users.
Modern static websites, however, have been created as an answer to the problems exhibited by dynamic websites. Unlike the latter, static websites do not employ databases and server-side programming languages, but are simply a collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Static websites therefore enjoy numerous advantages in comparison with dynamic websites (Rinaldi 2015):
These reasons are particularly important to ensure the sustainability of digital editions. The use of standard formats like TIFF and JPEG for digital photographs, HTML and XML for texts, and so on, ensures that the digital editions created will remain readable and useful for a long time to come (Rosselli Del Turco 2016). Consequently, this paradigm started to be emphasised in other similar projects in the field of digital humanities as well (Viglianti 2017; Daengeli and Zumsteg 2017; Diaz 2018).
These reasons, however, are less convincing in case we expect digital editions to contain user-generated contents as well. Therefore, static websites are not appropriate for all digital editions in the field of digital humanities, as such solutions will often fail to satisfy the needs of the creators and users. On the other hand, countless digital projects do not call for very complex content and its display. In such cases the existing solutions provided by static websites can be more than satisfactory, especially because modern static websites do not completely lack the option of adding dynamic contents. In reality, static websites have only experienced their renaissance with the appearance of various services and programming solutions that allowed such websites to include dynamic contents.
Modern static websites are no longer coded manually, but are instead generated by
employing static website generators. Nowadays, the selection of such generators
is extremely broad. One of the most popular is Jekyll,Jekyll • Simple, blog-aware, static sites, accessed
April 15, 2019, https://jekyllrb.com/.Daring Fireball: Markdown, accessed April 15, 2019,
https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/.
For many years, the TEI Consortium has been regularly maintaining and updating
the XSL Stylesheets, which can be used to generate, on the basis of TEI
documents, not only (X)HTML websites, but also many other formats, including
LaTeX, XSL-FO, EPUB, DOCX, and ODT. These XSL stylesheets are freely available
from the GitHub repository and regularly updated in accordance with the new
versions of the TEI Guidelines.TEI XSL Stylesheets, accessed April 15, 2019, https://github.com/TEIC/Stylesheets.TEI: Text Encoding
Initiative, accessed April 15, 2019, https://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/index.html.
Most importantly, by means of custom profiles, the XSLT stylesheets of the TEI Consortium allow for very flexible adaptations to different project requirements. In fact, the XSL Stylesheets for TEI have been written with the intention of being as adaptable as possible. Numerous parameters exist that can be configured according to preferences. The stylesheets contains many variables and templates, which can be adapted to specific requirements. The authors of the code even thought of empty (hook) templates, to which custom contents and XSLT programming code may be added. I have made use of all these options when writing the SIstory profile for the XSLT stylesheets of the TEI Consortium. (Pančur 2019a)
Initially, I based the creation of these profiles on the needs of the Research
Infrastructure of Slovenian Historiography for flexible and prompt publication
of our technical documentation online. In the context of the Research
Infrastructure, my colleagues and I are managing the History of Slovenia –
SIstory portal, which also contains a repository and digital library. Therefore
we have decided to include these digital editions into the existing
infrastructure as intensively as possible. Until 2016, the static websites of
these digital editions had been stored on an additional www2 server of the
SIstory portal,www2.SIstory.si, accessed April 15, 2019, http://www2.sistory.si/.
Due to the desire to maximize the integration of digital editions into the SIstory portal, I also tried to bring the external appearance of digital editions as close as possible to the user interface of the portal. As an example, Figure 1 shows a snapshot of the home page of the portal between the years 2012 and 2016, and in Figure 2, the user interface of the digital edition of 2014.
Even though the colour scheme is identical and the layout of the logo, the search
bar, main top navigation menu, and the contents are very closely modelled after
the SIstory portal, the user interfaces are nevertheless not the same. At the
time, the user interface of the portal was still based on the old HTML 4
technology, but I had already started to use responsive website design and HTML
5 for the digital editions. In this regard, I decided to use the responsive
front-end framework ZURB Foundation.Foundation: The most advanced responsive front-end
framework in the world, accessed April 15, 2019, https://foundation.zurb.com/.
Apart from the originally envisioned technical documentation, we soon also started to publish other sorts of publications – in particular monographs, collections of scientific texts, and magazines – online in the HTML format. Therefore I reconfigured the SIstory TEI profile with the aim of facilitating the publication of these sorts of digital editions. The profile allows for the transformations of:
The digital edition's main navigation menu is located at the very top of the web page, as horizontal navigation with a drop-down menu. The structure of this navigation reflects the structure, sections, and divisions of the individual TEI documents. In the continuation I will briefly outline the possible content sections of the navigation as well as the TEI document. In practice, no TEI document contains every single one of these sections. Instead, the authors of TEI documents can use and arrange them completely in accordance with their needs.
The central part of the content is always contained within the
Only
Unlike the aforementioned
The GeoNames, accessed April 15, 2019, http://www.geonames.org/.DBpedia, accessed April 15, 2019, http://wiki.dbpedia.org/.
As it is also possible to use the SIstory profile to convert the TEI documents
from the TEI corpus, the id before the hyphen in
The SIstory profile also allows for the display of dynamic contents. The Tipue
Search engine is included as a basic functionality.Tipue Search, accessed April 15, http://www.tipue.com/search/.search.html
web page that includes a dynamic display of search results. The content of the
TEI document is indexed, as a JavaScript object (JSON), in the file tipuesearch_content.js, which needs to be located in the
same folder as the search.html file. Content indexation
takes place at the level of paragraphs (
Much like the main XSL Stylesheets of the TEI Consortium, the SIstory profile has been created to allow for its adaptation to the requirements of any individual project. To this end, it includes a few original parameters of the TEI Consortium's XSLT stylesheets which affect the default stylesheet output, to which I have added a few new SIstory parameters. All of these parameters can be set up anew for each conversion, but it is more appropriate that new project profiles be created for each individual project. The conversion usually proceeds in the following manner: the project's custom profile imports the SIstory profile, which, in turn, imports the TEI XSLT transformations, and adds overrides (see Figure 8).
For example, during conversion, the default SIstory profile thus expects every
chapter or the first
The myi18n.xml
document, it is possible to further expand this localisation. The localisation
of the Tipue Search engine has been suitably taken care of as well.
The SIstory profile also allows for the parallel display of the texts' various
language versions. In this case, all of the main index.html
file.
The display of the TEI document's metadata from the
Apart from this simple SIstory profile configuration, any additional XSLT
transformation that can be completely adapted to the needs of an individual
digital edition can be included during the conversion of a project.
Simultaneously, by using various JavaScript libraries and plugins as well as web
applications, it is also possible to enable additional dynamic content display.
For example, in the case of the SIstory portal's digital editions, I have
successfully used DataTablesDataTables: Table plug-in for jQuery, accessed April
15, 2019, https://datatables.net/.Highcharts, accessed April 15, 2019, https://www.highcharts.com/products/highcharts/. ImageViewer, accessed April 15, 2019, http://ignitersworld.com/lab/imageViewer.html.
Simultaneously, in 2017, with the publication of Saxon-JSSaxonica, accessed
April 15, 2019, http://www.saxonica.com/saxon-js/index.xml.Kapelski pasijon (The Železna Kapla Passion Play) digital edition, I
have thus created and used the following parameters to generate a dynamic
parallel display of facsimiles as well as the diplomatic and critical
transcription:
The default SIstory profile transformation generates all the HTML, JS, and any other files in a single folder. As the digital editions generated in this manner consist solely of static web pages, they can also be used on personal computers. In this manner it is possible to effectively test the digital editions even before publishing them online, where we can swiftly and simply publish them on any accessible servers. Additionally, the GitHub repository web pages are a free option that can also ensure an efficient version control.
However, the main purpose of SIstory profiles is to include digital editions
directly into the SIstory portal's repository and its digital library. Thus we
can efficiently store all of the digital editions' files by adding persistent
Handle System identifiers and checksums for all the relevant files, as well as
flexibly organise digital editions as one or several digital objects with one or
several intellectual entities. Each intellectual entity has its own Handle
identifier and metadata. It can include several files or none at all. The files
belonging to an individual intellectual entity are located in the same folder.
The path to this folder also includes the suffix of the Handle persistent
identifier, which is, in the case of the SIstory portal, always a numerical
value (e.g., for the suffix 555, the relative path would be /cdn/publikacije/1-1000/555/file). Therefore, the SIstory XSLT profile
must know the values of these identifiers in advance. Thus we can precisely
determine, even in advance, whether the entire contents of a digital edition
should be contained in a single intellectual entity of the SIstory portal, or
whether various digital edition files should be included in various intellectual
entities. These identifiers can be recorded among the rest of the metadata in
The SIstory XSLT profile is open source and available in the GitHub repository. (Pančur 2019a) Another GitHub repository also contains all of the digital editions currently kept on the SIstory portal. The project upgrades of the SIstory XSLT profile for each of these editions are available as well. (Pančur 2018) I regularly expand and maintain the SIstory profile in accordance with the changes of the TEI XSLT stylesheets.
There are several advantages to a digital editions infrastructure organised in this manner:
The work presented in this paper was supported by the Slovenian historiography research infrastructure (I0- 0013), and the Slovenian ESFRI infrastructures DARIAH- SI which are financially supported by the Slovenian Research Agency.
The contribution is based on the position that, with regard to digital editions, the highest possible degree of digital sustainability of data, presentations, functionalities, and programme code should be ensured. This represents a significant challenge, especially in case of smaller digital humanities projects with limited financing, which does not allow for the long-term maintenance of technically-demanding digital editions. The alternative solutions facilitated by the swift development of static web pages in the recent years are presented in the contribution.
Static websites enjoy numerous advantages in comparison with dynamic websites: efficiency, hosting, security, maintenance, and versioning. These reasons are particularly important to ensure the sustainability of digital editions. These reasons, however, are less convincing in case we expect digital editions to contain user-generated contents as well. Therefore, static websites are not appropriate for all digital editions in the field of digital humanities. On the other hand, countless digital projects do not call for very complex content and its display. In such cases the existing solutions provided by static websites can be more than satisfactory, especially because modern static websites do not completely lack the option of adding dynamic contents. Modern static websites are generated by employing static website generators. Humanities texts are most often encoded with Extensible Markup Language (XML). Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformation (XSLT) is used as a tool for XML conversion: also in static websites. Digital editions based on the TEI have been successfully included in the SIstory portal repository as static web pages, employing basic XML (XSLT) and web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). All the static web pages also have the possibility of displaying dynamic content.
In the case of SIstory portal, we have decided to upgrade the basic XSLT
Stylesheets of the TEI Consortium. In the SIstory TEI
Profile chapter, I will present generic upgrade of the TEI Stylesheets.
In the chapter Configuring and Upgrading the SIstory TEI
Profile I will outline the project-specific options for upgrading this
profile. In both these chapters, I will also discuss the various options of
adding dynamic contents to static websites. In the chapter Publishing Digital Editions I will outline how these static websites
can be made available to the public, in particular by their inclusion in the
SIstory portal's digital repository. In the Conclusion, I
will also mention a few more general findings.
There are several advantages to a digital editions infrastructure organised in this manner: using format that is most common in digital humanities (TEI XML); using a single XML technology (XSLT) for various sorts of digital editions, which enjoys a wide support in the TEI community; the possibility of simply including JavaScript libraries and plugins; flexibly adding dynamic contents with Saxon-JS; in comparison with other technologies (dynamic sites), static sites ensure a relative sustainability and simple maintenance of digital editions; using Git version control to store the various versions of digital editions together with the software used to generate static websites; open access to the complete digital editions code in the GitHub and GitLab software development platforms; the possibility of sharing digital editions on the GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages, and, last but not least, the possibility of including them in the History of Slovenia – SIstory portal.
Prispevek izhaja iz stališča, da je pri digitalnih izdajah potrebno poskrbeti za čim bolj celovito digitalno trajnost tako podatkov kot prezentacij, funkcionalnosti in programske kode. To je velik izziv predvsem za manjše digitalno humanistične projekte z omejenim financiranjem, ki ne omogoča dolgoročnega vzdrževanja tehnično zahtevnih digitalnih izdaj. Kot alternativno rešitev so v prispevku predstavljene rešitve, ki jih v zadnjih letih ponuja hiter razvoj statičnih spletnih strani.
Statične spletne strani imajo v primerjavi s dinamičnimi številne prednosti: zmogljivost, gostovanje, varnost, vzdrževanje in kontrola verzij. Ti razlogi so zlasti pomembni zaradi trajnosti digitalnih izdaj. Vendar so ti razlogi manj prepričljivi, če glede digitalnih izdaj pričakujemo, da bodo vsebovale tudi uporabniško generirano vsebino. Zato statične spletne strani niso primerne za vse digitalne izdaje s področja digitalne humanistike. Po drugi strani pa je zelo veliko digitalnih projektov, kjer vsebina in njen prikaz nista tako zelo zahtevni. V teh primerih bi bile obstoječe rešitve, ki jih prinašajo statične spletne strani, več kot zadovoljive, predvsem zaradi tega, ker moderne statične strani niso povsem brez možnosti dodajanja dinamičnih vsebin. Moderne statične spletne strani generiramo s pomočjo generatorjev statičnih spletnih strani. Besedila v humanistiki večinoma kodiramo z XML označevalnim jezikom. XSLT pa uporabljamo kot orodje za pretvorbo XML: tudi v statične spletne strain. Digitalne izdaje, ki temeljijo na TEI, so s pomočjo osnovnih XML (XSLT) in spletnih tehnologij (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) kot statične spletne strani uspešno vključene v repozitorij portala SIstory. Vse statične spletne strani imajo tudi možnost dinamičnega prikazovanja vsebine.
V primeru portala SIstory smo se odločili za nadgradnjo osnovnih pretvorb XSLT konzorcija TEI. V poglavju SIstory TEI profil bom predstavil svojo generično nadgradnjo pretvorb XSLT konzorcija TEI. V poglavju Konfiguracija in nadgradnja SIstory profila bom nato predstavil projektno specifične možnosti nadgradnje tega profila. V obeh teh poglavjih bom predstavil še različne možnosti dodajanja dinamične vsebine statičnim spletnim stranem. V poglavju Publiciranje digitalnih izdaj bom omenil, kako te statične spletne strani damo na razpolago javnosti, predvsem z vključitvijo v digitalni repozitorij portala SIstory. V Sklepu naposled dodam še nekaj pomembnejših splošnih ugotovitev.
Tako vzpostavljena infrastruktura za digitalne izdaje ima več prednosti: uporaba podatkov, ki so v digitalni humanistiki najbolj razširjeni (TEI-XML); uporaba enotne XML tehnologije (XSLT) za različne vrste digitalnih izdaj, ki ima široko podoro v TEI skupnosti; možnost enostavnega vključevanja JavaScript knjižnic in vtičnikov; fleksibilno dodajanje dinamične vsebine s Saxon-JS; statične spletne strani zagotavljajo v primerjavi z ostalimi tehnologijami (dinamične spletne strani) relativno trajnost digitalnih izdaj ter relativno enostavno vzdrževanje; uporaba Git kontrole verzij za shranjevanje različnih izdaj digitalnih izdaj, skupaj s programsko opremo, ki smo jo uporabili pri generiranju statičnih spletnih strani; odprti dostop do celotne kode digitalnih izdaj v platformah za razvoj programske opreme GitHub in GitLab; možnost gostovanja digitalnih izdaj v GitHub Pages in GitLab Pages in nenazadnje možnost vključitve v portal Zgodovina Slovenije – SIstory.