Create and Name Documentation Files

Rationale

LEMDO follows a set of standardized practices when creating and naming documentation files. Following these practices ensures that our Encoding Guidelines are organized and easy for readers to use. The documentation on this page describes how to create and name a file so that our documentation index is navigable and our audience can find the information that they are looking for.

Practice: Create a New Documentation File

LEMDO has a template file for creating new documentation files. To use it:
Right click on the documentation folder in Oxygen’s project view.
Hover your mouse over “New.”
Select “File …”
Scroll down to Framework templates.
Click on the LEMDO folder
Select documentation_template.
Update the file name in the text box at the bottom of the window.
Click the “Create” button.
To add your new file to the shared LEMDO repository, use the svn add command followed by an svn commit. Ensure that you add it to the data/documentation folder. For detailed instructions, see Practice: Add Files to the Repository.
To build your new documentation file and add it to the documentation index, use the lemdo-include processing instruction in the ODD file. For instructions on how to do so, see Processing Instructions.

Practice: Name Documentation Files

All documentation file names should begin with learn followed by an underscore and a descriptive identifier. The descriptive identifier should be short and clearly relate to the content of the file. Typically, the file name should be similar to the title of the documentation page (e.g., the page titled Terminal Code for Naming Facsimiles has the file name learn_facsTerminalCode).
Use camelCase for file names with more than one word following the underscore. Never put spaces in file names. If the name of your document contains an acronym (e.g., OED, TEI), keep the acronym in full capital letters in the file name. For example:
learn_encodeQuotations.xml
learn_remediateOED.xml
It is important that the file name matches the xml:id on the file’s root <div> element. If the file name does not match the file’s xml:id, Oxygen will give you a validation error. Do not commit files whose file names do not match their file xml:id.

Practice: Update Metadata in Documentation Files

When you create a new documentation file, you must update the metadata housed in the attributes on the root <div> element.
First, give credit to yourself and any co-authors of the documentation file as writers of technical materials in the @resp attribute. See Give Credit for Documentation Files for instructions.
Next, specify the audience that the content of the documentation file is aimed towards in the @ana attribute. See Encode Intended Audience for Documentation for instructions.

Practice: Add Content to Documentation Files

Add the content to your documentation file using the structural elements outlined in Structure of a Single Documentation File and the standard headings and style outlined in Documentation Style Guidelines. Tag sample encoding following the practice given in Encode Sample XML.

Special Case: Modify an Existing File

We often only need to make minor edits to existing documentation files. In some cases, new practices means that we need to make more significant changes to the content of a documentation file by adding, removing, or significantly rewriting sections.
If you significantly modify a documentation file, give yourself credit as a writer of technical material in the @resp attribute on the root <div> element of the file. If you are adding material or modifying only some parts of the file, do not remove the other values on the @resp attribute. If you completely rewrite the file and none of the original file remains, remove the old values on the @resp attribute.
We very rarely want to change the xml:id and file name of a file. When we do so, any existing links to the file break and we must make updates across the repo.

Prosopography

Illya

Illya has a BA in English and Sociocultural Anthropology and an MA in English. Prior to joining the HCMC, he was a PhD candidate in English and Book History at the University of Toronto and worked on Records of Early English Drama and on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. His work at the HCMC focuses on creating web-based applications for research projects led by members of the faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria. This involves creating schemas for new and existing datasets, writing XSLT and build files to transform datasets into structured TEI and HTML formats, implementing staticSearch, and ensuring that new projects are Endings Principles compliant.

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Project Manager, 2025-present; Assistant Project Manager, 2024-2025; Research Assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA (honours with distinction) in 2024, and an MA English in 2026. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Her SSHRC-funded MA thesis project focuses on transcribing, editing, and encoding early modern girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s May Masque in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

Samuel Seaberg

Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike. During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space, his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun. Note: Samuel now works for LEMDO as the Assistant Project Manager, much to his bike’s chagrin.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title Create and Name Documentation Files
Type of text Documentation
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source
TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration n/a
Edition Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status prgGenerated
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability
This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.