The purpose of this project was to use XML to encode a complex multilayered diary trying to employ publicly available DTD's. The lack of a DTD to model our XML document on encouraged us to alter the TEI DTD in order to accomodate all the needs of an extensive diary containing various types of enclosures.

This project report details the process of transforming excerpts of an autograph diary with enclosures into human and machine readable code for display on the World Wide Web. The project of electronic text editing was undertaken as part of a summer work study in collaboration of the Humanities Computing and Media Centre and the McPherson Library's Special Collections at the University of Victoria.

The application language used for the editing process is Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Document Type Definition (DTD). The Document Type Definition was created using a tool provided by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) called TEI Pizza Chef. The Pizza Chef allows the user to generate a DTD that reflects the needs of the document to be edited as closely as possible.

The DTD I needed for this project had to be suitable for the structure and content of a diary containing various kinds of enclosures. Before the DTD was created I had to decide how the diary entries and enclosures were to be treated. Are all documents of equal importance or does the diary have priority over the enclosures? If there is an apparent dependency between the documents should it be made visible? How would enclosures be treated if there is no apparent connection(apart from time) between them and the diary entry? The problems I encountered were therefore not only of a technical but also of a philosophical nature.

The complex diary of Robert Graves, poet and writer; 'I, Claudius'.Robert Graves (1895-1985) held by the McPherson Library's Special Collection, SC050 Gr.1, at the University of Victoria seemed to be an ideal object for a trial mark up project. The autograph diary, which has not been published, consists of entries beginning February 22, 1935 and closing on May 6, 1939. During this time period Robert Graves was living and collaborating with Laura Reichenthal, Gottschalk, (Riding) Jackson; poet and writerLaura Riding (1901-1991).

My choice of diary entries was mainly based on the technical challenge posed by the enclosures in several of the days recorded. This conscious choice completely eliminated the first year (1935) as it contains no enclosures at all. The enclosures chosen from 1936-1939 range from letters received by Robert Graves, an autograph letter written by Graves and edited by Laura Riding, a telegram and newspaper clippings to an autograph poem.

I worked with the original diary, comparing the text of the diary to the typed transcription provided by Beryl Graves(1915-). Due to the fact that Mrs. Graves was transcribing from photocopies of the diary several diffrences in spelling and punctuation occurred which I amended back to the original form of the diary entries. None of the enclosures were transcribed which I did in order to make them equally available for encoding. The next step was the scanning of the chosen diary entries and the enclosures which was done by Martin Holmes (thanks!).

The advantage of XML as a content oriented markup language(compared to HTML which is display oriented) is evident in the way it is able to replicate the exact structure of the document you are applying it to. This flexibility allowed the inclusion of enclosures, such as the telegram, within the text of the diary entry in the position when Graves refered to it. The result is the existence of both texts on an equal level while other enclosures are not mentioned in the diary text and were included after the entry.

The basic problem of encoding the enclosures was the absence of an element called enclosure in the DTD, which would have the function to identify the additional documents attached to the diary entry. In order to be able to label those enclosed documents with a tag ('enclosure') the element had to be defined first before it could be used in the XML document.

The transcription of the diary entry contains visual aids to guide the user fast and efficiently through the document and its enclosures. The camera icon shown in the transcription will produce the scanned image of the diary entry. The enclosures marked in blue follow the same structure in displaying the transcribed enclosure first. This transcription also includes the camera icon that connects to the image of the enclosure. The layout was arranged this way to show samples of the actual handwriting as well as a legible and searchable transcription. The addition of links of biographical(red), bibliographical (green) and explanatory content (khaki) to the transcribed diary and enclosures makes it possible to reference the people and works mentioned, thus explaining their significance for Robert Graves at a given day in his recorded life. The enclosure-links are placed either on the spot of reference in the diary text or if they are not referred to, at the end of the diary entry. This way the reader can choose either to follow the link to the enclosure immediately or to read the complete diary entry first before opening the enclosure and its corresponding image.