Guide

This page walks through the editing workflow. simple-edep is a simple rewrite of the EDEP edition tool for serverless deployment, so the steps mirror EDEP's, with one difference: there is no backend — the XML is built in your browser and saved to GitHub with your own token.

For developers and contributors, see the Developer guide →

1 · Access

Reading is open to everyone: you can browse Inscriptions, Geodata and People without an account. To create or save a record you sign in once with a GitHub personal access token (public_repo scope, or repo for a private corpus). The token is kept only in your browser and is sent solely to the GitHub API.

2 · Create or open a record

Start a fresh record with + New inscription, or open an existing one from Inscriptions with Edit — its metadata and transcription load back into the form. Give each record a short file name (e.g. rom_001); it becomes records/<file>.xml.

3 · Describe the object and its context

Fill the metadata sections from the top down. The right-hand pane shows the EpiDoc XML live and flags whether it is well-formed.

• Identity & IDs — title, editor, and cross-references (EDH, EDCS, EDR, Trismegistos, PHI, CIL → idno).
• Object & support — object type and material (with EAGLE / Getty AAT URIs), dimensions, letter heights, condition.
• Layout & lettering — columns, lines, script (handNote).
• Text type & dating — EDH text type and origDate (see step 5).
• Find spot — modern country/region/settlement, coordinates (used by Geodata), provenance, repository.

4 · Transcribe the text

The transcription pane is a live Leiden+ → EpiDoc editor (jinn-codemirror, the same Leiden engine EDEP uses). Type with Leiden conventions and the EpiDoc XML is produced automatically. You can also paste raw text from EDCS or PHI and use the Import buttons to convert it.

You type (Leiden+)	EpiDoc XML	Meaning
[Imp]	<supplied reason="lost">Imp</supplied>	Lost text, restored
(C(aesar))	<expan><abbr>C</abbr><ex>aesar</ex></expan>	Abbreviation expanded
〚abc〛	<del rend="erasure">abc</del>	Erasure (rasura)
ạ (underdot)	<unclear>a</unclear>	Unclear letter
[.5]	<gap reason="lost" quantity="5" unit="character"/>	Lacuna, 5 lost letters
1. …	<lb n="1"/>…	Line number

Use the toolbar buttons for the common cases, and ↩ to (re)number lines. The Fullscreen button (⤢) opens the editor across the whole window for distraction-free work; press Esc to leave it.

Tip — lacunae inside restorations. A lost-letter gap that belongs outside a restoration can end up nested inside it: typing [- - - t]ribuno and then turning the dashes into a gap yields the wrong [[- - -] t]ribuno. Keep the gap element outside the supplied so it renders as [- - - t]ribuno — edit in the XML pane if needed.

5 · Names, places and dates

Add the apparatus, translation, commentary and bibliography in their own sections. For dating, give origDate a year or range (@when / @notBefore / @notAfter), a dating method, and the date as expressed on the stone. Places carry a Pleiades / Trismegistos Geo URI and the Roman province, and the find-spot coordinates place the record on Geodata. Persons named in an inscription are kept in the People register and linked back to it.

6 · Save and export

Before saving, you can assign the record to a Collection using the dropdown in the toolbar — pick an existing collection or choose + New collection… to create one. Collections let you group related inscriptions and filter them in the Inscriptions catalogue.

② Save to GitHub commits the record to records/<file>.xml and updates the catalogue index immediately so the record appears in the list without any delay. Every record follows the EpiDoc Guidelines and is emitted with RNG/Schematron processing instructions. You can also Copy XML or Download and commit by hand.

7 · GitHub sign-in

Signing in lets you commit records straight to GitHub under your own account. No password is stored — only a Personal Access Token (PAT) you generate once.

Prerequisites — get write access first

1. Create a free GitHub account at github.com/signup if you do not have one yet.
2. Request access — go to Login and click Request collaborator access ↗. This opens a pre-filled GitHub issue; the repository administrator reviews it and sends you a collaborator invitation by e-mail that you must accept before you can commit records.

You cannot save records to the corpus without collaborator access, even with a valid token. Steps 3–4 below only make sense after your invitation has been accepted.

Create a token

1. Go to GitHub → Settings → Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Tokens (classic).
2. Give it any name (e.g. simple-edep). Set No expiration or a date you can remember.
3. Tick the public_repo scope (write access to public repos). Use repo instead if your corpus is in a private repository.
4. Click Generate token and copy it — GitHub shows it only once.

Sign in

1. Open Login (or click Login in the top-right).
2. Paste your token and click Sign in. The app calls GET /user on the GitHub API to verify the token and retrieve your username, display name, and avatar.
3. You are returned to the page you came from. Your avatar and @username appear in the top-right corner on every page.
4. Your identity and token are kept in browser storage only — they are never sent to any server other than api.github.com.

Returning visits

Your identity persists across browser restarts (localStorage). When you reopen the site after a break, the topbar shows a Welcome back, @username chip; click it to confirm or sign out without having to re-enter your token.

Sign out

Click your avatar / @username in the top-right. This ends the session immediately. Your saved token and identity are kept for the next visit — the Welcome-back chip will appear. To remove your token and identity completely (e.g. to switch accounts), click Sign out on the Login page.

Tip — token scope. If you are committing to a private fork or corpus repository, the public_repo scope is not enough. Generate a second token with the full repo scope for that repo, or use a fine-grained token scoped to only that repository.

8 · Saving without an account

Saving records to the corpus requires a GitHub account. If you are not signed in, the editor shows ② Sign in to save. Clicking it opens a prompt with two options:

• Create a free GitHub account ↗ — opens github.com/signup in a new tab. Sign-up takes under a minute and no payment is required.
• Already have one? Sign in → — goes to the login page where you paste your personal access token.

You can still Copy XML or Download at any time without an account, and share or commit the file manually later.

9 · Collections and favorites

There are two independent ways to group inscriptions, with different scopes:

Editor collections — group your own records

When you save an inscription to GitHub you can tag it with a named collection. Use the Collection: dropdown in the editor toolbar — pick an existing group or choose + New collection… and type a name. The collection is stored in your browser and written into the catalogue index when the record is saved, so it immediately appears as a filter in Inscriptions → Collection. Collections created in the editor are visible in the Collection facet even before any records are assigned to them.

• The collection filter sits at the top of the Inscriptions sidebar, below the Corpora section. It is hidden until you have created at least one collection.
• If you have the catalogue open in another tab while saving, it refreshes automatically.

Favorites — bookmark any inscription

Every row in Inscriptions has a ★ button at the right. The same button appears in the reading panel header. Click it to save the inscription to your Favorites — works for records from any corpus (EDH, I.Sicily, or your own) without an account.

Click ★ → Save to… to open the collection popover and add the inscription to one or more named bookmark lists. Create a new bookmark list by typing a name at the bottom of the popover and pressing Enter. Open Favorites to manage all saved inscriptions and bookmark lists in one place.

Browser-local only. Both editor collections and favorites are stored in localStorage and are not shared between devices or browsers. Editor collections are also written into the GitHub index when you save, so they persist as long as the record exists in the repository. Favorites are lost if you clear your browser's site data.