Digital Editing Terms

Attribute:

An attribute in XML and HTML occurs inside an open tag (never inside a close tag) near the element name. It adds information about the content inside that specific occurrence of an element or set of elements that are used throughout your document.

For example, you may use the <note> element many times in your edition—they typically contain lots of notes—, and so an attribute might tell you, for example, the number of each particular note, its type, who is responsible for including the note, and its place:

Browser:

A browser is the app you use to access the Internet on phones, computers, pads, etc. The most common browsers are Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Whenever you google anything, you are using a browser.

CSS, Cascading Stylesheets:

Cascading Stylesheets inform browser software how to display a web page. They are called "cascading" because you can have many of them, ordered according to priority, and so the browser software will run through all of them like a waterfall, gathering information from each one, and privileging the most recent information. For more on CSS, including how to order CSS stylesheets, please see the CSS tutorial in this textbook.

Client:

From the perspective of the World Wide Web, computers, phones, tablets, and laptops used to access information on the Internet are "clients": they are the "customers" using web services. Programmers distinguish between programs that run "server side" (data, web pages) or "client side" (software on your local computer; apps on phones). Creating digital editions does not require installing any server-side programs; any public-facing web space on a server can be used.

Code:

Code is any language that tells computers to do things. Usually, content is coded so that programs know what to do with them: if I want to something to appear in bold, I tag it with a code, and then a program such as the programming making up Internet browsers will know which items in my content need to appear in bold. In practice, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between programs and codes.

Database:

A database is "an organized collection of data that is stored and managed electronically, making it easy to access, retrieve, modify, and analyze." (ChatGPT)

Domain:

A domain is the unique name used to identify a website on the Internet. Digital creators can purchase domain names IF they are available. You do not need to know any technical details, only how to purchase them, which you can do through any of the web space providers discussed in the "SetUp" section of this textbook.

Technical Details, in case you are interested: Domains are tied to IP addresses (unique numerical addresses assigned to servers hosting websites) through the Domain Name System (DNS). Here's how it works:

1. You type a domain (e.g., www.example.com) into your browser.
2. The DNS translates the domain into the corresponding IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.1) and connects you to the correct web server.
3. The server delivers the requested website.

Element, Tag:

An element encloses a chunk of text, naming it so that humans and computers can find it. The element name occurs inside an angle brackets: <element>. This tag marks the start of the chunk of text, and, in XML, the end of the chunk must be designated by a close tag, marked by a forward slash: </element>. For example,

<title>The Handmaid's Tale</title> See also Tag.

Extensions

There are two kinds of extensions: 1. Browser extensions add software to your browser that enables you to read pdfs and google docs in your browser. You may have experienced adding extensions to your browser yourself. In Chrome, you can see the extensions that have been added by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner, , and then selecting "Extensions."2. Filename extensions are a part of every file name on your computer that indicates what kind of file it is and thus what app (piece of software) for your computer to use when opening them. Word files end in ".docx"; HTML files end in ".html". When you are creating a digital edition, you will need to see those filename extensions that are, by default, not visible in your File Explorer or Finder windows. In Windows, select "View" in your Explorer window, and then check "file name extensions":On a Mac, go to Finder, Settings, Advanced, and check the box to show filename extensions:

HTML, HyperText Markup Language

Hypertext Markup Language is the code that is readable by browsers for displaying web pages. Please see the HTML section of this textbook.

(Unique) Identifiers:

"'Identifiers' refer to unique strings of letters, numbers, or names which are used to uniquely recognize and categorize individuals (people) or locations (places) in digital content, tools, or datasets." (ChatGPT)

Markup Languages:

Computers can "read" the alphabet (if it has been typed on a computer keyboard — "keyed," for short — as text and is not an image) by translating letters into zeros and ones. Computers can automatically find words, punctuation, paragraphs, etc. Markup languages enable the computer to chunk differently, to read one set of words as a specific thing — the title of a book, for instance. So, instead of seeing "Handmaid's" and "Tale" as two completely separate entities, markup allows them to see a collection of words as a particular thing: <title>The Handmaid's Tale</title>

Nested Tags:

Both XML and HTML require that tags be properly nested — elements inside elements like Russian matryoshka dolls. It is what we might call the syntax of these codes. For the sake of simplicity in this demonstration, I am using my own made-up XML tags in the images below, not TEI.

In XML, tags are not allowed to overlap; they are properly nested inside each other:




In the image below, you can see XML code that is broken because tags cannot overlap, the squiggly red line and warning comment in oXygen indicating that I have made a coding error by opening a page element outside a paragraph tag and then closing the page tag inside that paragraph.



But if I do what oXygen wants me to do, end the page tag outside the close-paragraph tag, ...


then I am improperly representing the text that I'm coding: paragraphs don't necessarily end before the bottom of each page!

This conflict between printed books and hierarchical tagging systems is precisely the kind of problem that the TEI Consortium has resolved in its coding guidelines, in this case offering rules about how to use page-break tags that are self-closing and thus can appear anywhere in the TEI code, always properly nested: <pb/>

oXygen XML Editor

Created by a wonderfully responsive Europoean company low in cost, oXygen is software that makes coding TEI / XML documents so much easier than it would be otherwise. Just as Microsoft word is used to compose printable, editable documents, oXygen is used to compose documents in code as well as to write CSS and program with XSLT. Download a 20-day free trial from the oXygen download page, or purchase it: notice that for academics, it costs only $6.00 US per month. Here are the oXygen download instructions.

Path:

A Path is the route that one must take, from folder to subfolder, from one location to another on a server and/or on one's local computer (see Understanding Paths). There are two kinds of path: 1) Absolute and 2) Relative.

Personography (also called Prosopography):

In TEI, a personography is a list of people, often including biographical information and unique identifiers for each person. Wonderful insofar as they allow linking to names of persons in the texts of your digital edition to a separate biography page offering more information, unique identifiers are crucial for distinguishing this "John Smith" from that one, e.g. Many identifiers that serve to render your personography (and consequently edition) findable by search engines come either from the US Library of Congress authorities list (https://authorities.loc.gov/) or the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) (https://viaf.org/): the latter creates one identifier and links it to all national library identifiers around the world, the Library of Congress included. In the tutorial on LEAF-Writer, this textbook explains how to mobilize these identifiers in your edition even if the edition doesn't include a biography page.

Programming Languages:

Programming languages are comprised of codes that tell a computer to switch one thing on and another off, use this byte but not this one. Programs do more than create words and images on a computer screen and more than mere mathematical calculations: they are generative, producing results that programmers may not have imagined. Computer scientists learn "low-level" programming, which is to say programs that talk more directly with the physical parts of a computer. Higher level code is easier to learn. Python is an example, as is XSLT, of higher level code.

Server:

A server is a computer designed to run 24/7 in order to manage, store, process, and serve data to other devices (clients). A web server is all or part of the server that is public facing, providing web pages that can be accessed via a web address or url.

SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language:

The parent Markup Language of XML and HTML. See more about its history.

Software:

As distinguised from the physical material of computers (hardware), software is the code that makes them run and allows you to do things on them. Micosoft Word is software, browsers are software, apps on your phone are software. They are made of code and programming languages.

Splash page, or "index.html"

The default page that web browsers open first of the files in any given folder is named "index.html". Living inside the digital edition's main folder, the edition's home page is called "the splash page" because it is where visitors who are "surfing the web" first "dive in" to your content. Digital editors try to make their edition's home pages as lovely as possible. Click on an image to see a larger version:

Tag, Element:

In TEI / XML, tags contain content that their names describe.

Open tag: <elementName>
Close tag: </elementName>
Self-closing tag: <element/>

See also Element.

TEI, TEI Encoding:

A set of schemas, document structures, elements / tags, and attributes recommended for humanists when encoding digital editions in XML. XML allows digital creators to use ANY tag and attribute names, whatever words or numbers make the most sense to them. The Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, a group of digital humanists interested in creating and sharing electronic texts, created a set of guidelines ensuring that we would all use the same names in the same way while allowing digital creators the freedom needed to effectively represent all kinds of documents.

The Text Encoding Initiative Consortium provides guidelines explaining these recommendations.

Troubleshooting:

Troubleshooting is figuring out what went wrong when you ran that code with this program and opened it in this software only to see a result that you didn't intend AT ALL. It is a truth universally acknowledged that no programming works perfectly the first time you run it, and often not until the third or fourth times, or maybe more. There are simply too many variables in computing environments and too many pitfalls. Codes and programs take everything you say literally — they don't have the distinctively human capacity to understand what you meant even if you didn't quite express it in exactly the right way. They are like the child who, when asked to bring the milk, arrives at the car not with his travel cup of milk but with the whole gallon of it from the refrigerator: "you said to bring the milk!" In my view, almost all of coding and programming is troubleshooting, and it works better if everyone understands that creating a program requires watching it fail and then fixing it. It is important when code isn't working to walk away: turn off the computer and walk.away. Everyone needs collaborators who can help troubleshoot, and there are many, many people in the Digital Humanities community who can and wish to help.

Breaking News: ChatGPT and other AI programs are often very helpful at figuring out what went wrong, although in my experience, they are less helpful at correcting the code, and more helpful in explaining what's going on in a way that helps you think of alternatives and fixes.

URL, Uniform Resource Locator:

The web address that people will use in their browsers to get to your finished edition.



In the first part of the URL that indicates the domain name, letter case makes no difference:
https://www.MaryLeapor.org = https://www.maryleapor.org. However, when the web address reaches down into your public_www folder to subfolders, then case matters: https://www.maryleapor.org/html/leapor1748.html is NOT the same as https://www.maryleapor.org/HTML/leapor1748.html — only the latter will bring up the web page constaining Leapor's 1748 volume of poetry because I have placed it inside a folder called "HTML," not "html."

W3C, World Wide Web Consortium:

The World Wide Web Consortium is a non-profit organization started by Tim Berners-Lee that creates standards or specifications for code used around the world. For example, the Internet makes use of HTML, and so the W3C has created rules for what counts as correctly coded and accessible HTML. Although Web browsers can sometimes display HTML that does not meet W3C standards, it is best to follow them in order to be certain that users can see everything you have included on your web page.

Web Space:

A folder on a server where files can be placed that are viewable to the public via a web address or url. The folder is often called "public_www" or "public_html."

XML, eXtensible Markup Language:

A coding system with specifications developed by the W3C. While these rules describe how XML must work — tags must be nested, for example, rather than overlapping — the element and tag names can be anything that makes sense to the digital creator. It makes sense, for example, to use the tag <title> for the title of a book or poem. The elements, tags, and attributes comprising any XML document make sense not only to computer programs but also to human readers: XML is therefore considered to be semantic markup: the code is semantically meaningful.

The most important thing to understand about XML and languages in its family is that they are hierarchical in a way that the paratextual and typographical codes or conventions used in printed books are not. See Nesting.

XPath, XML Path Language:

A coding system used in programming with specifications by the W3C. See the tutorial on XPath

XSLT, eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations:

XSLT is a programming language written in the XML code, often used for transforming a document encoded for sustainability (TEI/XML) into a web page (HTML). Please see the XSLT Tutorial in this textbook.