Monday, August 6, 2012

Release of archival text editions


A recent post noted the reorganization of our downloadable archive of image data.  Today, we have published a first package of diplomatic editions of texts.

In contrast to our relatively static collection of large, binary data files of images, we expect to release new packages updating or expanding our archive of TEI-compliant editions whenever new material is ready.  We are managing these releases with the Nexus repository management system, hosted at the University of Houston High Performance Computing Center (briefly noted here).   Nexus organizes named "artifacts" (as it terms published objects) in groups, with further, specific identifiers distinguishing each published version.  Most significantly for the on-going management of the HMT project's digital resources, Nexus supports the automated management of dependencies used in build systems like maven or gradle. This means that when we want to automate a task working with our editions, we can simply declare that our task depends on a particular version of the artifact, and the zipped file will be automatically retrieved over the internet and unpacked locally.  (For the technically inclined, I recently blogged a note elsewhere about using automated dependency management in small disciplines like Classics.)

In addition to the TEI-compliant XML files, the package includes a CTS TextInventory file documenting the citation scheme of each edition, and how it maps onto the document's XML markup.  README files summarize the contents and editorial status of each section of the archive.  This release includes initial, unverified diplomatic editions of 32 Iliadic texts from papyrus sources, the Iliadic text and scholia from Iliad 1-6 in the Venetus A manuscript, and other texts from the first eleven folios of the Venetus A manuscript.

The package is named hmt-editions, and it belongs to the group org.homermultitext.  For this package, a date string is used for the version identifier (formatted as YYYY.MM.DD).  You can search for "hmt-editions" from the nexus server at beta.hpcc.uh.edu/nexus, or directly download the zip file from this URL.

If you want to add a dependency to this package in your maven or gradle build, use the following maven coordinates (in whatever syntax is appropriate to your build system):

groupId:  org.homermultitext
artifactId: hmt-editions
version: 2012.8.7
type: zip

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