Revisiting an Old Model for the Dynamic Generation of Digital Editions

method than a proposed workflow and list of specifications, the prospectus called for the development of an interactive edition-processor by which “users will [...] be able to generate mediated (‘critical’) texts on the fly by choosing the editorial approach which best suits their individual research or study needs” (O’Donnell 1998, ¶ 1). The heart of the prospectus was a diagram of the “Editorial Process Schema” I intended to follow (figure 1). The edition was to be based on TEI (P2) SGML-encoded diplomatic transcriptions of all twenty-one known witnesses to the poem. Its output was to consist of dynamically generated “HTML/XML” display texts that would allow users access to different views of the underlying textual data depending on their specific interests: e.g. editions containing reconstructions of archetypal texts, student texts based on witnesses showing the simplest vocabulary and grammar, “best text” editions of individual witnesses or recensions, etc. The production of these display texts was to be handled by a series of SGML “filters” or “virtual editions” that would be populated by the unspecified processor used to format and display the final output.