Processing Pointers, Links, and References

Processing of References

LEMDO has thousands of <ref> elements that point to editions, anthologies, components therein, and to resources outside LEMDO. These are all processed into HTML hyperlinks for the static site.
Our processing does not do anything with <ref> elements in PDFs. Any pointing you do inside a portfolio with the <ref> element will result in nothing in a PDF.
The <ref> and <ptr> elements can co-exist because they are pointing to xml:ids, but only the <ptr> element can be converted to strings at build time in LaTeX.

Example: Processing of a Reference in a PDF

Encoding:
<note type="gloss">Monarchs (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:OEDT2">
  <title level="m">OED</title>
</ref>
  <term>prince</term>, n. 1.).</note>
Rendering in the PDF:
princes Monarchs (OED prince, n. 1.). The Chorus … emdH5_FM_annotations line 95

Processing of Pointers

We would like to have a canonically-structured textual reference in the output. In the digital edition, we want the A.S.Sp. system (e.g., 5.1.2) plus a precise hyperlink. In the print edition, we want the A.S.L reference system (e.g., 2.3.101). We do not want to have the author of the critical text write a literal 2.3.101 into their document, because lineation may change as the text is edited, but we do want a critical introduction to be able to contain A.S.L citations when it is printed. The actual text in the parenthetical citation must be generated at build time.
LEMDO therefore has two different processing chains for pointers: one for the digital edition and one for the print edition (a camera-ready PDF that can be downloaded or printed through print-on-demand services).
For online publication, we generate a parenthetical citation that gives LEMDOʼs canonical reference system (A.S.Sp.). Clicking on the citation takes one directly to the part of the speech being cited.
For the PDF, we generate a parenthetical citation that gives A.S.L (act, scene, line number) using the line numbers generated for the PDF at the time we make the PDF.
For example, an editor might use a <ptr> element in their critical introduction to point to anchors in the middle of a long speech in their modern text. In the processing for the PDF, LEMDO will calculate and supply the A.S.L, so that reader may find the exact line(s) being cited in the generated parenthetical citation. For the online version, the parenthetical citation will be A.S.Sp. but the hyperlink on the citation will go directly to the target point in the speech.

Citing Published Texts

One approach to the mutability of online texts produced both within and outside LEMDO is to choose a specific print edition of source texts (such as the New Oxford Shakespeare) to which all references can point. This has the obvious disadvantage that such a pointer cannot be made into any kind of link, but links are fragile anyway, and this approach also fits with the numerous citations of critical print texts which occur throughout critical material.

Pointing within Portfolios

We have seen above that certain types of citation between texts are not very robust, because texts are (for the forseeable future, anyway) steadily evolving, and even our principles for lineation and our citation styles are not absolutely finalized. However, when youʼre editing critical material that will be bundled with an edition of a text in (for example) a print volume, you need to be able to point into the text, just as you need to be able to attach annotations to specific points in the text. There are two scenarios in which we do this:

Pinning Annotations

Annotations are <note> elements (documented in detail in Writing Annotations) which live in separate files outside the plays to which they refer. At build time, annotations may be rendered as links with popups, or as footnotes in a print edition.
Annotations are pinned to a location in the text using a system of anchors and pointers which is documented in Writing Annotations.

Local Pointers

Although we know that pointing between electronic texts which are in constant development is inherently fragile, there are situations in which we need to be able to create a canonically-formatted text reference in a critical text to a specific point in the text which is being discussed. If these texts are in the same portfolio, then we know they will be built at the same time, and therefore any output created will be consistent across that build.
This enables us to solve the particular problem noted above, where we would like to have a canonically-structured textual reference such as 2.3.45 appearing in the critical text, and this is particularly important for the print texts that we are going to publish. We donʼt want to have the author of the critical text write a literal 2.3.45 into their document, because lineation may change as the text is edited, but we do want a critical introduction to be able to contain such text when it is printed; therefore the actual text must be generated at build time. We do this using a <ptr> element with @type="localCit":
<div><!-- In the critical text: -->
  <p><!-- ... --> the king addresses the <quote>noble English</quote> (<ptr type="localCit" target="doc:emdH5_FM.xml#emdH5_FM_anc_2000"/>) separately <!-- ... --></p>
  <!-- In the play text: -->
  <l>Oh, <anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_2000"/>noble English,</l>
</div>
At build time, this will be expanded to (for example) (1.2.111). You will notice that we use the same mechanism for creating a point in the text that can be addressed as we do for annotations: we insert an anchor (see Writing Annotations for instructions on how to do that). To specify a range, include pointers to two anchors with a space between them:
<ptr type="localCit" target="doc:emdH5_FM.xml#emdH5_FM_anc_2000 doc:emdH5_FM.xml#emdH5_FM_anc_2001"/>
If youʼre pointing at an entire line, speech, scene or act, then thereʼs no need to insert two anchors. You can instead add an @xml:id to the target element ( <l> , <sp> , or <div> , if there isnʼt one there already, and point to that instead. To create a new @xml:id, the simplest way is to insert an anchor element in the usual way, then take its @xml:id, which is guaranteed to be unique, and use that, discarding the rest of the <anchor> .

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.

Bibliography

OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

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 Processing Pointers, Links, and References
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.