Around 1641 Galileo Galilei’s beloved pupil, Benedetto Castelli (ca. 1577–1643), presented to the Venetian Senate his expert advice on the most pressing hydrogeological problems impacting the Lagoon of Venice. The text, entitled Considerazione intorno alla laguna di Venezia [Consideration on the Venetian Lagoon], was printed for the first time posthumously, in the 1660 edition of Castelli’s renowned work, Della misura dell’acque correnti [On the Measurement of Running Waters] (Bologna, 1660). It offered an unexpected (for the Venetians) diagnosis of the reasons for the reduction of the water depth of the lagoon and a controversial solution to the problem. A manuscript copy of his Consideration on the Venetian Lagoon, preserved in the State Archives of Venice, and is linked to the activities of the Magistrato alle acque, or Magistrate for the Waters, in charge of controlling all activities concerning water. Castelli’s text is part of a documentation folder entitled “Scritture sulle condizioni e stato della Laguna” [Writings on the conditions and state of the Lagoon], which is preserved in the Savi ed esecutori alle acque, pezzo 123 [Magistrate’s acts]. The edition would ideally have facsimiles of the printed text and the manuscript version, as well as some of the knowledge gathering documents (e.g., from lagoon fisherpeople) from the Magistrato alle acque.
The historical documents related to Castelli and the management of the Lagoon of Venice in the Renaissance are here published thanks to editioncrafter. EditionCrafter, under development (2022-2024) is designed to be an open-source, customizable publishing tool that will allow users to deploy their own texts, data, and commentary as low-maintenance digital critical editions. It will enable the creation of static sites that rely on basic well-established technologies and workflows to address issues of longevity, maintenance, sustainability, and cost. For more about this work, see the NSF award announcement: Crafting an Open Source Digital Publication Tool for the History of Science.
This project builds upon the publication of Secrets of Craft and Nature. A Digital Critical Edition of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 by the Making and Knowing Project. The underlying software developed for Secrets of Craft and Nature will serve as the starting point for EditionCrafter.
This repository is a template repository for users who plan to use EditionCrafter to create their editions. It contains the basic structure and organization of the files needed as input for the creation of the "folios view" element: the side-by-side viewing panes of the text, where users can choose between versions of the text including facsimile images, transcribed text, and translated text. All associated metadata is also to be housed in this repository.
Example of the "folios view," with side-by-side viewing panes of fol. 4r of BnF Ms. Fr. 640 in Secrets of Craft and Nature.
Because this repository may be used by beginners, a number of helpful how-tos have been included:
- Introduction to Git and Github
- Naming Protocols
- Setting up Github to Work Locally & General Workflow
- Command Line Intro and Helpful Commands
- Project Setup Overview - reference for project developers
This repository has two main areas:
- texts/ directory - all files associated with an edition's source material (i.e., transcriptions and translations)
- metadata/ directory - all metadata (data about data) associated with an edition
- data/ directory - this is where the EditionCrafter data is stored for the texts.
This is based upon the model used for the creation of Secrets of Craft and Nature. M&K's repository for BnF Ms. Fr. 640’s data is cu-mkp/m-k-manuscript-data and the “read me” file (scroll down below the file and directory listings on the repo's homepage) describes the repo's structure and how M&K has already worked with Github for Secrets of Craft and Nature.
To update the data that EditionCrafter uses to render the texts, you first need to install the EditionCrafter CLI. Once that is installed, run the following command in the base directory of this repo:
editioncrafter process texts/interviste-pescatori_1r-35v.xml data https://cu-mkp.github.io/venice-editioncrafter-data/data
This will update the data directory with the latest data for this edition.