The Digital Edition File Structure

As you can see when you download the DigitalEdition folder (used in the tutorials), the folders and files it contains are structured in a certain way. The main folder contains subfolders (css, HTML, images, people, text, XML, and xslt) as well as the index.html file which is the main "splash" page -- the page people will land on first when they come to your digital edition:

DigitalEdition file structure

Your own digital edition will mimic that structure, as you can see in the digital edition I am creating for Mary Leapor's poetry:

minimal File Structure

You can name your main digital edition folder anything you wish, as I have named mine MaryLeapor: it will be part of the URL when you transfer this folder into a public www web space for online viewing. So, if my digital edition was Mary Leapor's poetry, and I was planning to move the whole folder, when finished, to my "diged.org" public web space, I could name it "MaryLeapor." Then the URL for the digital edition would be https://www.diged.org/MaryLeapor. You CAN use spaces in the folder name; however, eliminating them ensures that the URL works best (more about URLs).

Your digital edition folder does not need to be on your desktop—it can be anywhere—but make at least four of the subfolders shown above: css, HTML, XML, and xslt (if you have page images, add an "images" folder within the digital edition folder). This structure is necessary for the xsl and css programs to work properly because they make use of paths, as explained in the introduction, and also something called XPath, which is the subject of another tutorial.

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