How the Table of Contents is Generated for Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

Semi-diplomatic transcriptions vary widely in their original form and in the encoding practices of their editors, but when a play is rendered for the end-user, a table of contents needs to be constructed to appear in the slide-out Content tab on the website. For a non-diplomatic text, the TOC will be constructed using the text node of the <head> element of any <div> elements in the text which have a <head> , since these are obviously the major divisions in the text (usually act-scene numbers or scene numbers), but for semi-diplomatic texts, there may well be no such obvious structure to draw on.
Therefore a rather complicated algorithm tries to decide what components of the text should best be used to create a useful TOC. This is how the process works:
By default, <pb> elements having a signature or folio number in their @n attribute will be used.
However, if the text contains 20 or more <label> elements, then these are assumed to be more suitable text-division headings, and will be used instead. (For an example, see the texts in the Douai Shakespeare Manuscript Project.)
If 20 or more <label> elements have @n attributes, then only the <label> elements having @n attributes will be used, and the text of the TOC entries will be taken from the @n attributes.
If more than 20 <label> elements exist, but fewer than 20 have @n attributes, then all <label> elements will be used, but whenever a <label> has @n, its value will be used for the TOC entry text instead of the content of the label.
Why so complicated? While a TOC constructed from <pb> elements may be very straightforward, it is not very helpful to a general reader looking for the major sections of the text, and it may end up being extremely long, so <label> is usually a better choice if the text contains headings or similar markers which can be tagged as labels. However, the text content of a <label> element may not be very helpful in itself; it might look like this:
<label>Act<choice>
  <abbr>
    <g ref="g:us_Eng">ꝯ</g>
  </abbr>
  <expan>us</expan>
</choice> jmus</label>
which may be puzzling to a reader. In such a case, the encoder can add the @n attribute to provide a more helpful label for the TOC:
<label n="Actus Primus">Act<choice>
  <abbr>
    <g ref="g:us_Eng">ꝯ</g>
  </abbr>
  <expan>us</expan>
</choice> jmus</label>
and this will be used in preference to the textual content. The @n attribute can be used on all <label> s to create an entirely curated TOC if that is preferred.
LEMDOʼs long-term plan for most texts other than Douai texts is to mobilize the <milestone> element in order to note correspondences between places in the semi-diplomatic transcription and the modern text. Many semi-diplomatic transcriptions already contain commented-out <milestone> elements. When a modern text is finalized, we will be able to finalize the milestone elements in the semi-diplomatic transcription by adding a @corresp attribute with a value of the @xml:id value of a scene or act <div> in the modern text. We will also add an @n attribute whose value will be used to generate a TOC of act-scene or scene beginnings. Ideally, users will be able to toggle between a signature TOC (A1r, A1v, A2r, A2V, etc) and a milestone TOC.

Prosopography

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 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.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs 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

Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

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 How the Table of Contents is Generated for Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions
Type of text Documentation
Short title
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.