(ANS – Rome) – The entire Salesian Sources (Fonti salesiane) is now available in English translation in a web edition that will enable the ordinary reader and those engaged in Academic work to identify quickly passages or features of interest and quote the passage with immediate reference to the editio typica. This is a significant step forward for academics or indeed for anyone who wishes to reference properly this outstanding collection of primary Salesian texts. But there is more to come.

The web edition has the following features:

• colour-coding of certain elements which will be of help to readers of the web edition: (a) comments made by the translator, coded brown; (b) terms in use by Don Bosco, and which have direct relevance to the Salesian charism, coded blue; (c) citations which can be traced to a source – coded grey, but if they are biblical quotations they will be coded green; (d) glosses (explanations or translations) coded olive; e) brief summaries of sections and documents, coded orange.
• page reference to the editio typica. All the 1317 pages of the original Italian text have been inserted. If this is unhelpful, the reader can remove them by selecting 'Hide page breaks' in the Toolbox, but if the reader needs to cite a passage in translation, then it certainly helps, in a web edition, to be able to make reference to the editio typica in Italian.
• navigation. The Toolbox is always visible, and enables the user to go immediately to a quick reference to parts and sections of the entire text (from which, internally, there are additional navigation options), or a complete table of contents (TOC) with all 309 documents listed. One can return at any moment to these navigation aids by choosing quick or full reference from the Toolbox.

Behind this web edition lies an XML file. There is an entire encyclopaedia of knowledge contained within the 'narrative' text of 'Salesian Sources' and XML can make sense of this. The compliers are working towards an entire list of persons  of all the people mentioned in the Sources, and their relationship to Don Bosco. This is what a tiny part of that 'encyclopaedia' looks like at the moment:

Using the right sort of software (available at no cost) all of the information about individuals and their relationship to Don Bosco can be extracted in an instant.  Obviously, this then becomes a very powerful tool for extracting information from 'Sources' that would otherwise be very difficult to bring together.  It is expected that this will be ready within a month.

The XML file, already generously encoded, though not to the full extent for 'persons' as indicated above, is already available on the website.

Published on 25/06/2014