The Electronic Library of Lutheranism: Project Wittenberg Documents in Hypertext Part Two: Practical Matters Draft Two February 1, 1997 This part of the ELL standard describes the way in which Project Wittenberg documents are converted to hypertext, based upon the assumptions within part one. Volunteers who do hypertext conversions for Project Wittenberg will be expected to update ELL index pages as well as marking up the text in hand. While Project Wittenberg will continue to place as much freedom of operation as possible in the hands of the individual volunteers, it is assumed that some decisions will need to be made by the coordinator or a future editorial board to keep the collection integrated. The following procedures are outlined to help reduce possible sources of confusion to a minimum. Please check with the coordinator before diverging from them. 1. All Project Wittenberg documents must be first placed in a simple ASCII format and be loaded into the text archive prior to work on an HTML format. The Project gives priority to adding new documents to the ASCII collection over all other operations simply because it is the only universally readable file format in an international context. English translations and primary sources are given priority over other languages simply because it is the most widely understood tongue on the current international scene. Next in priority are texts in their original languages. 2. When a volunteer is ready to convert a document to HTML, that person should first check with the Project Wittenberg Coordinator to assure that others have not already started to work with it. In return, others will be asked not to convert the document being marked up by that volunteer. The Coordinator or an editor will assign a path for the new document and give it to the volunteer. 3. The volunteer should set up a template with the appropriate navigational buttons, colors, graphical elements, title, meta tags, etc. before beginning work. The title page should be the first developed, allowing an anchor point for the rest of the work. 4. Next, the volunteer should analyze the document to locate all citations of other works. The internet should be checked for an addressable version of the cited work. If none exists, a quote page will need to be created to link the piece to its place in literature. If an addressable for of the document does exist, especially within the ELL itself, the document should link to it. For verses from the Scriptures, the ELL will create its own verse addressable version of the KJV or alternative modern translations freely donated for non-commercial purposes. Where a portion does not exist, the volunteer will mark up the appropriate chapter from the KJV for reference purposes. When links are made to existing texts on the internet, care should be taken to avoid pointing to the sites of organizations offensive to the general public or which work at cross-purposes to those of the Christian faith. There are circumstances under which such linking is appropriate, but such linking should be done only where it is clearly justified. Should a text to which an ELL text links be less than fully cited or should the passage be deep within the document linked to, a footnote style intermediary page should be prepared under the guidelines in 5 below to identify the piece. A link outwards to the passage should be placed on the footnote page to complete the link. 5. Where a work being marked up points to a document not as yet on the internet in addressable form, quotation pages should be prepared for them. These should be done prior to markup of the original document. Care should be taken to honor the copyright of the sources quoted on these pages. Internet sources which are not fully cited, especially those without copyright information may not be used. Preference should be given to public domain versions and to fully cited, internetworked versions. Where public domain versions do not exist, a temporary, footnote style page should be created pointing to the exact reference where the quotation may be found in physical form. Permission should be sought, then, to extract the quote from the document and place it on the net in this form. If permission is denied, the citation will stand. The Project Coordinator will assist with this process. Where a quotation may be extracted, enough of the context of the quote should be included to identify the point the original author was making. Navigational buttons should be included on quote pages to take a reader back to the place where the reference appears in text being marked up and to the title page of the whole work. A full citation should be included at the end of the file, including copyright information as well as the source information. The source citation should be as precise as possible. 6. After the quote pages are complete, then the volunteer will identify places where subject links will be provided leading out from the marked up documents. The volunteer should then check the subject control pages at the ELL to see if appropriate subjects exist there. If at all possible, previously used subjects should be employed. If this is not possible, the volunteer should propose one. The volunteer will list all the proposals for the document in an email note to the Project Coordinator for approval. Where new subjects are approved, the volunteer will then compose or modify the subject pages effected and forward them to the Project Wittenberg Coordinator, or an editor, for inclusion in the ELL immediately. No links will be made to the document being marked up itself until that document is included in the ELL. 7. The document should then be marked up according to the guidelines in part one and forwarded to the Project Wittenberg Coordinator, along with all quote pages, graphics files, etc. These will be checked and then placed in the ELL. 8. The volunteer will then, as quickly as possible, modify the Author, Title and Subject pages to reflect the presence of the newly marked up piece. This should be done in close communication with the Coordinator to prevent confusion resulting from two or more volunteers attempting to update files at the same time. 9. Once the control pages have been updated, the Coordinator will then "release" the document to the internet community. ------------------------------------------------- file: /pub/resources/text/wittenberg: 00ell-2.txt .