The "Pôle Document numérique" of the MRSH at the University of Caen-Normandie is developing several tools and environments to work in XML on ancient documents:

  • for the digital edition of historical sources in TEI,
  • for the cataloguing of manuscripts and printed books in EAD,
  • for the electronic publishing.

Several of these tools, developed in the framework of Biblissima, are used for the edition and publication of Thecae, the Collection of inventories of medieval and modern books (8th - 18th century) at the Presses Universitaires de Caen.

The tools presented below use the XMLMind XML Editor (XXE), a software developed by Pixware:
Download XXE (available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux).

Edit old inventories in XML-TEI

As part of Biblissima, the "Pôle Document numérique" at the MRSH of Caen took part in a reflection on the encoding of old inventories in XML. He then developed a digital environment for scientific editing in XML-TEI of lists of books from ancient libraries, designed to publish the sources in the Thecae electronic collection (published at the Presses Universitaires de Caen).

Download the digital editing environment
XXE "TEI_InventairesAnciens" environment (Pôle Document Numérique, MRSH de Caen).
Download XXE

Read more:

  • Detailed presentation of the environment (MRSH de Caen)
  • For further details about the environment and the tags that have been used, you can download the encoding methodology here: Éditer un inventaire ancien en XML-TEI P5 (in french ; produced by the Pôle Document numérique de la MRSH de Caen : Marie Bisson, Anne Goloubkoff, Emmanuelle Kuhry)
  • Thecae, Collection of inventories of medieval and modern books (8th - 18th century) (Presses Universitaires de Caen)

The digital editing environment for scientific publishing of ancient inventories in XML has been carried out by Biblissima. It results from a partnership between the Centre Michel de Boüard (CRAHAM – UMR 6273), the Pôle Document numérique at the MRSH of Caen (USR 3486) and the IRHT (UPR 841).

Catalogue manuscripts and printed books in XML-EAD

As part of the creation of the Virtual Library of the Mont Saint-Michel, but also for the project Route du livre italien ancien en Normandie, Bibliothèque historique du ministère de l’agriculture and Dicomarine, members of the Pôle Document numérique at the MRSH of Caen have been working on the XML-EAD encoding of book descriptions and have developed a working environment for the XML cataloguing of manuscripts and ancient books.

Download the cataloguing environment
XXE Environment "BVMSM" (Pôle Document Numérique, MRSH de Caen).
Download XXE

Read more:

This environment has been developed as part of the creation of the Bibliothèque virtuelle du Mont Saint-Michel (Biblissima Partner Project, selected in 2015). It has been realised by the Pôle Document numérique at the MRSH of Caen and has been supported by the French Ministry of Culture as part of the Call for Projects "Patrimoine écrit" (2011). It results from a partnership between the Centre Michel de Boüard (CRAHAM – UMR 6273), the Pôle Document numérique at the MRSH of CAEN (USR 3486) and the city library of Avranches.

Work in collaboration (PluCo plugin)

PluCo (PLUgin COllaboratif) is a module developed in Java allowing collaborative editing work on remote XML resources.

PluCo enables:

  • the creation and collaborative manipulation of XML resources ;
  • collaborative indexing by connecting to authority lists (local, national or international).

Download PluCo
PluCo (PLUgin COllaboratif) - Pôle Document Numérique, MRSH de Caen
Download XXE

Technical details:

  • The plugin must be integrated into an XML editor, it cannot work autonomously.
  • The resources must be stored on an XML server accessible in REST and compliant with the XQuery Update standard (all tests have been performed on BaseX 8.0+ servers).
  • It is natively functional with XMLMind Editor but can be easily extended to be compatible with other XML editors and servers.

Presentation of the tool (MRSH of Caen)

PluCo is made available under the CeCILL-C open source licence, it is developed by the CERTIC and the Pôle Document Numérique, with the support of Biblissima.

Publish, disseminate

MaX is an XML Display Engine. It relies on BaseX, the XML database engine, and the RESTXQ and XSLT technologies.

Download MaX
MaX (XML Display Engine) - Pôle Document Numérique, MRSH of Caen

MaX is a generic and extensible tool capable of producing reading interfaces for all XML standards. However, by default it offers a number of modules for the TEI.

MaX offers page making solutions that respect the principles of responsive design. It provides a search engine based on XQuery configurable and adaptable to the XML sources that need to be manipulated, as well as a pager to display large resources efficiently.

It includes the MathJax modules for equations and OpenSeadragon for the images.

MaX offers by default, in addition to the support of the basic TEI elements (generic divisions, tables, figures, paragraphs, notes, etc.), the following modules:

  • critical apparatus management ;
  • corrections management ;
  • index generation ;
  • alignment of texts versions (e.g. transcription/translation).

Presentation of the tool (MRSH of Caen)

MaX is made available under the CeCILL-B open source licence, it is developed by the CERTIC and the Pôle Document Numérique, with the support of Biblissima.