Between the source text and the manifestations of the published work: Sequences of applied documentation in the typographic articulation of a multi-format production system

Abstract

In this article we describe the implementation, for a university journal, of the multi-format publishing model that uses the single source model containing the expression of the author’s work, within an innovative editing and typesetting workflow.On the technical side, we analyse the conditions and the possibility of adopting — and adapting, through scripts of our own — cutting-edge open-source solutions, namely Quarto and Typst, to the editorial requirements specific to the field of law. The present text, along with the entire issue in which it is published, is proof of successful adoption. Readers will decide whether the adaptation succeeded as well.We open with a challenge: explaining the functional, not merely aesthetic, differences between the ways a text can be marked up during writing and editing. Correctly marking up authorial intent is the key to the entire conversion chain from the single source, and must therefore be properly explained.We then present the decisions made and the stages covered in implementing the aforementioned technological innovations: from computing the proportions of the typographic composition to conceiving and designing the electronic formats for distributing the works. The latter are, to our knowledge, unprecedented in Romanian academic publishing: the preservation of the print edition’s pagination in the html and epub formats, which allows readers to cite the print pagination regardless of the format actually consulted; the automatic detection of ecli, eli or celex identifiers and the creation of url lookup queries that look them up directly in the databases where those documents are held; the integration with reference managers and automated citations based on the conventions specific to Romanian legal writing, and more.