THL Toolbox > Essays > Creating an XML Essay for THL > Posting THL XML Essay
Posting THL XML Essay
Contributor(s): THL Staff.
Once the XML document has been cleaned up and validated, one is ready to post it to the THL site. Do not attempt to post any files unless you are on the THL staff or a principle collaborator. Otherwise, contact a member of our staff. Posting is done through the regular process of FTPing it up to the site on Iris using SecureFx, a program that is available to UVa staff and students from ITC. If you do not have FTPing privileges to the THL site on Iris, talk to one of the THL staff and have them post it for you, provided it has been previously cleared by the director, David Germano or one of the principle collaborators. The final XML file should be placed in the directory hierarchy according to its topical location within the THL. If it is an essay on the Nyingma Gyubum (rnying ma rgyud ‘bum), or The Collected Tantras of the Ancients, then it would go in collections/literature/ngb/essays. Whether or not there is a separate “essay” folder in that section is up to the discretion of the manager of that section.
Important: Prior to posting an XML document to the THL site, the DOCTYPE definition and the xml-stylesheet processing instruction must be commented out. Otherwise, the XSLT transformation engine with return an error rather than the formatted XML document. Before posting the XML document make sure the first three lines look like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--?xml-stylesheet href="file://localhost/C:/xml/css/essay.css" type="text/css"?>
<!DOCTYPE TEI.2 PUBLIC "-//THDL//DTD TibetanText//EN" "file://localhost/C:/xml/dtds/xtib2.dtd" //-->
This is because both the DOCTYPE and the xml-stylesheet instructions contain href's that point to one's local hard drive, which the server cannot understand. Commenting them out avoids this problem.
When the document is posted to the site, it may be linked too using the following static URL, where the ellipsis indicates the path to the document from root, tibet (e.g., /tibet/tools/how_to_essays.xml):
http://orion.lib.virginia.edu/thdl/xml/showEssay.php?xml=/thdl/ …
Essays that are to be referred to from multiple locations within the THL can go to one of the subfolders in tibet/essays/, according to its sub-topic. The URL is static in the sense that it will not change except for the addition of a location parameter tagged on to the end to indicate which part of the document to view. This will also lead to shorter URL than the unwieldy one’s that call the SaxonServlet with both an XML and XSL absolute parameter.
Note: This method of displaying the XML documents is an improvement over the previous method of using the full Saxon call. However, it is likely a stepping stone to an even tidier method, which may entail another change in the URL. But, for the immediate future, this represents the stable URL. This call is only to be used for XML essays. For other documents - monographs, specific technical documents (such as transliterations schemes), and the like - there will be different URL specifications that are in the process of being developed.