The document discusses experiments with publishing historical documents from the Western European Union (WEU) collection online using Edition Visualization Technology (EVT). It provides an overview of the WEU-DIPLO project, which involved encoding the documents in XML-TEI and analyzing them. The experiments with EVT included customizing templates for document elements like headers and paragraphs. Features demonstrated include displaying facsimile pages alongside transcriptions and linking text to images. The document outlines plans for further adapting EVT into a framework for publishing different types of documents on European integration history on the CVCE website.

1. Roberto Rosselli Del Turco - Università di Torino Florentina Armaselu - CVCE
roberto.rossellidelturco@unito.it florentina.armaselu@cvce.eu
Chiara Di Pietro - Università di Pisa Lars Wieneke - CVCE
dipi.chiara@gmail.com lars.wieneke@cvce.eu
Raffaele Masotti - Università di Pisa
raffaele.masotti@gmail.com
1
www.cvce.eu
Europe’s Beginnings through the Looking
Glass: Publishing Historical Documents
on the Web Using EVT

2. The CVCE
Summary 2

3. 1. Overview of the WEU-DIPLO project
2. Experiments with Web publication platforms
3. EVT adaptation
• experiments
• publication framework overview
4. Future work
5. Conclusion
6. References
Summary
Summary 3

4. Overview of the WEU-DIPLO project: document structure. ©WEU-UEO
Overview WEU-DIPLO 4
Header
Content
Footer

5. 1. Goal: XML-TEI encoding, corpus analysis and Web publication of institutional documents
of the W.E.U. (Western European Union):
• Topics: armament production, standardization, control in the period from 1954 to 1982;
• Source: Archives nationales de Luxembourg, W.E.U collection.
2. Initial format:
• digitized versions (JPEG) of typewritten materials (one file per page).
3. Size:
*proc. = processed
Overview of the WEU-DIPLO project
Overview WEU-DIPLO 5
Category Number of
documents
Number of documents
per language
Number
of pages
Number of pages per
language
EN FR FR proc.* EN FR FR proc.*
Note 89 43 46 37 395 191 204 155
Minutes 30 15 15 15 256 138 118 118
Memorandum 3 1 2 2 16 7 9 9
Study 2 0 2 1 12 0 12 8
Discourse 1 0 1 0 4 0 4 0
Draft protocol 2 1 1 0 4 2 2 0
Total 127 60 67 55 687 338 349 290

6. Overview of the WEU-DIPLO project: workflow
Overview WEU-DIPLO 6

7. Microsoft Word Styling (headers, footers) – WEU-DIPLO
Overview WEU-DIPLO 7

8. Microsoft Word Styling (headings, line breaks, paragraphs) – WEU-DIPLO
Overview WEU-DIPLO 8

9. XML-TEI Encoding: WEU-DIPLO - metadata, header. ©WEU-UEO
Overview WEU-DIPLO 9
@@hAuthor @@hArchNum
@@hStampConfid
@@hDocRef
@@hOrigDate
@@hOrigLang
@@hVersion

10. XML-TEI Encoding: WEU-DIPLO – Headings, paragraphs, line breaks. ©WEU-UEO
Overview WEU-DIPLO 10
@@Heading2
@@Paragraph
@@LineBreak

11. INTRODUCTION TO EVT

12. EVT FOR DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS

13. EVT experiments
Experiments 14
(Partial) customisation:
• General layout: folders structure, images renaming.
• EVT Transformer: builder pack (XSLT)
o added/modified templates for transforming specific patterns (headers, footers, paragraphs) (layout
not fully supported – e.g. sections, subsections, paragraph indentation, etc.).
• EVT Viewer: CSS
o added/modified statements to support visualisation in the browser of specific patterns (alignment,
text decoration, colour of headers, footers, etc.).
• Manual modification
o XML-TEI input: page breaks linked to the facsimile images;
o transformation output: changed HTML output to support particular features (Text-Link, HotSpot) (should
not occur in the real workflow).

14. EVT experiments – facsimile/transcription page side-by-side view (title page). ©WEU-UEO
Experiments 15

15. 1. Goal:
• publishing on the CVCE’s Web site different types of documents on
European Integration history.
2. Types of documents (for the majority, high quality multilingual
transcriptions are available - TXT, RTF, SRT formats):
• treaties;
• administrative documents (minutes, notes, memoranda);
• press articles;
• handwritten notes;
• letters;
• video and audio archives.
3. Types of features to be implemented (required / optional):
• side by side facsimile/transcription (replicating the original with more or
less fidelity) (r);
• multipanel alignment (r);
• text-image link (o);
• zooming (r);
• HotSpot (o), etc.
EVT adaptation – towards a TEI-based publication framework – types of documents/features
EVT adaptation 17

16. EVT adaptation – towards a TEI-based publication framework – manuscript note (Werner corpus)
EVT adaptation 18

17. EVT adaptation/combination with other tools – towards a TEI-based publication framework – general layout
EVT adaptation 19

18. EVT adaptation – towards a TEI-based publication framework – architecture, workflow
EVT adaptation 20
General architecture General workflow

19. 1. Identification of features to be implemented in the digital
editions:
• visualisation;
• search.
2. Publication framework design:
• core / plugin;
• optional / project specific.
3. Implementation of the module for XML-TEI conversion
(potential adaptation of OxGarage for batch processing).
4. Implementation/integration into existing CVCE architecture:
• Back End;
• Front End.
Future work
Future work 21

20. EVT framework:
• flexible enough to support different types of documents in
European integration history;
• possibility to compare original / transcription (of interest for
researchers in European integration studies);
• different degrees of fidelity to the original can be envisaged
(balance manual / automatic processing).
EVT adaptation:
• minimise the amount of manual interventions in the XML-TEI
documents;
• publication framework with modular architecture to allow gradual
development and customisation according to the needs of the
projects.
Conclusion
Future work 22

21. DEMO

22. THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR
ATTENTION

23. • EVT (Edition Visualization Technology): http://sourceforge.net/projects/evt-
project/
• KILN : http://kiln.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#
• TEIBoilerplate : http://dcl.ils.indiana.edu/teibp/
• TEI (Text Encoding Initiative): http://www.tei-c.org
• Versioning Machine: http://v-machine.org/
• XTF (eXtensible Text Framework): http://xtf.cdlib.org/about/
References
References 25