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Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - El Hajj, Tracey
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - MoEML’s ePub Files Process
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 7.0
PY - 2022
DA - 2022/05/05
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/epub_about.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/epub_about.xml
TY - UNP
ER -
Project Manager, 2020.
Junior Programmer 2018-2020. 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
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
ePubs are electronic publications that are fit to be read on designated devices and platforms (such as Kindle). We assume that the devices are not connected to the Internet, therefore the ePubs have to contain all the necessary information, data, and metadata. ePubs necessitate a particular structure (which will be discussed below). In order to produce MoEML ePubs, we have developed a series of XSLT
documents, that transform the source page (the online documentID.htm
), and build it (via an ANT
application) into the necessary components of an ePub, in the appropriate formats.
The MoEML ePub infrastructure consists of 5 XSLT
transformations (jenkins_to_epub.xsl
; epub_supplementary_files.xsl
; list_css_for_epub.xsl
; list_fonts_for_epub.xsl
; and list_images_for_epub.xsl
) and an ANT
build (createEpubs.xml
). The transformations are responsible for creating the necessary files, based on the ID.htm
file, and the ANT
application is responsible for building the ePub and zipping its contents in the right order.
jenkins_to_epub.xsl
—Main Transformation
This transformation is responsible for editing the source file from Jenkins, to have it fit the ePub requirements (the MoEML stylistic requirements as well as the global ePub restrictions). It removes some divisions, including breadcrumbs, the search bar, the left column. In addition, this transformation rewrites external links to link them to https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca. It also adds necessary metadata such as credits and PERS mentions where appropriate.
epub_supplementary_files.xsl
—Main Transformation
This transformation is responsible for adding the files that are essential for the structure of the ePub (to be discussed below). It also includes templates that contribute to the creation of the files mentioned. Note that this transformation is responsible for creating the CSS
files that override the MoEML files.
list_css_for_epub.xsl
This transformation creates a list of CSS
files that need to be copied into the ePub package. It is used by the ANT
build to determine which CSS
files need to be included, and from which location(s) to get them. It will then copy the files into the ePub CSS
folder.
list_fonts_for_epub.xsl
This transformation creates a list of fonts that need to be copied into the ePub package. It is used by the ANT
build to determine which font files need to be included, and from which location to get them. It will then copy the files into the ePub fonts folder.
list_images_for_epub.xsl
This transformation creates a list of images that need to be copied into the ePub package. It is used by the ANT
build (which will copy the files) to determine which images need to be included, and what location(s) to get them from.
ANT
build: createEpubs.xml
The ANT
build is responsible for creating the files and placing them in their appropriate folders, as well as copying CSS
files, fonts, and images into their corresponding folders. It builds/creates the ePub package, and zips it appropriately. Not that there is a specific order for zipping the files, for the ePub to function properly.
The ePub package consists of a mimetype.txt
, a META-INF
folder that contains the container.xml
file, and an EPUB folder that contains all other subfolders and files including the documentID.xhtml
.
mimetype.txt
contains one line of text: application/epub+zip.
META-INF
folder contains the container.xml
file, which has the location of the package.opf
file (also known as the brain of the publication—details below).cover.xhtml
: This file is the cover of the eBook. It contains a cover image, the title of the book, the credits, the category information, and the citation information. The credits are linked to the personography details available in the appendix of the book (documentId.xhtml
)toc.ncx
: This file is the book’s table of content information—the navigation map with appropriate playordernav.xhtml
: This file is the one responsible for the table of contents that appears in the book—Some of our born digital documents do not have a table of content. We still need to create nav.xhtml
, but we hide itpackage.opf
: This file declares all the elements included in the book, from images, to fonts, to css files, etc. All components of the ePub need to be declared in this file; otherwise, the build will result in errorsdocumentId.xhtml
: This is the main document that contains the body of the eBookCSS
folder: Contains the CSS
files (MoEML’s in addition to the files that override them, including: epub.css
, cover.css
, and nav.css
)The current design of the ePub has a minimalist text body that replicates a book’s page design and adheres to what ePubs usually look like. Our cover page however is where our design stands out: we are replicating the feel of Early Modern book covers. The cover page contains the project title (
.png
file from the corresponding PDF file, in order for it to appear consistently as a cover, regardless of the platform.
The ePubs will be published on MoEML’s UVic libraries UVicSpace—UVic’s Research and Learning Repository (https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/10927). MoEML is part of the
For more detailed information about the ePub building process, please see the developers’ ePub documentation .