Since one key purpose of this electronic edition of Hone's EDB is simply to make the text available online (with the collateral potential then of establishing an "every-day" list for readers), I thought it best to proceed with a simple HTML version produced with minimal tagging and web-resolution graphics. The Macromedia Dreamweaver MX software proved quite serviceable in this regard since it offers easy formatting, spell-checking, FTP connections, etc. without cluttering the underlying HTML code with any proprietary or idiosyncratic code. When this process is complete--and it will take some time because of the length of the text and the impossibility of scanning--the first volume of the EDB will be published online on the Hone BioText website. Simultaneously with the production of the HTML pages, I will also be copying the text into Emacs-TEI in order to produce a "level 4" electronic text employing the TEI-Lite DTD. This electronic text will be housed most likely on the servers of the Sterne Library--it will be open to use by scholars and readers who will be interested in the search and indexing capabilities of TEI-conformant documents. The electronic version may also provide the basis for a paper edition of the EDB.

Basic procedure:

Take digital image of each page in order to minimize handling (and hence damage) to original.

Transcribe the text from each page-image file into a plain .txt file, using minimal markup as necessary to allow fundamental formatting (that is, use only such basic tags as [p], [i], and note--with comment tags--any column or page breaks). The most serviceable software for this first transcription is probably Word, set to store the files as plain .txt.

When transcription is complete for each date, open the files in Dreamweaver and do a first proofreading scan as well as an initial

No indents on paragraphs.

Using uncurled quotation marks.

Not noting hyphenation at line breaks.

altered the two-column format into single column for web presentation.