Villa Chiragan

The catalogue The Sculptures of the Roman Villa at Chiragan, produced for the Musée Saint-Raymond, combines scholarly research with innovative publishing techniques based on web technologies (web.2print.org). The museum holds over 700 sculpted fragments discovered at Chiragan (Martres-Tolosane), around a hundred of which are on display. Whilst previous research focused mainly on specific groups of works, this catalogue offers a broader perspective, including works that have never been studied before. Structured in four parts (context and reconstruction of the villa, imperial and anonymous portraits, mythological sculpture, major late-period decorations), it combines scholarly texts, detailed descriptions, comprehensive bibliographies and comparative images. A dedicated photographic campaign provides high-definition images, some of which can be viewed in 360°. 1

Its multi-platform publication system, inspired by the Getty Museum, was designed by Julie Blanc and Antoine Fauchié. The system enables the simultaneous production of a digital version and a printed version from a single source (single-source publishing).

This architecture is based on open web standards (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and a suite of interoperable open-source tools: Jekyll for generating the static site, Paged.js for browser-based print layout, Git and GitLab for collaborative version control, Zotero for managing bibliographic references, and Forestry.io as a graphical editorial interface for the museum team. 2

Content, written in Markdown and then converted to HTML, is entered once and adapted for both web and print; the PDF is generated from the browser via Paged.js. The texts and images are distributed under a Creative Commons BY-SA licence, in accordance with the City of Toulouse’s open data policy. 3

The structure of this project is based on the principles of interoperability, modularity and versatility. Thanks to Git, all stakeholders work on the same source files, with changes automatically reflected across both platforms, thus constituting an open, collaborative and reproducible editorial model. 4

  1. Huber Marie, Digital catalogue: The sculptures of the Roman villa at Chiragan, Museum Mediation Platforms.
  2. Blanc Julie, A collaborative, multi-platform publishing workflow for the Saint-Raymond Museum, 2020.
  3. Huber Marie, Digital catalogue: The sculptures of the Roman villa at Chiragan, Museum Mediation Platforms.
  4. Blanc Julie, A collaborative, multi-platform publishing workflow for the Saint-Raymond Museum, 2020.

Collecting data

Actors

Christelle Moliné: editorial coordination
Pascal Capus: catalogue copywriting

Tools

Markdown
Zotero

Tasks

Writing
Bibliography in Zotero
Text markup

Notes

Transforming data

Actors

Antoine Fauchié: toolchain design
Julie Blanc: graphic design and web development

Tools

Forestry.io
Jekyll
HTML
Git (GitLab)

Tasks

Markdown files converted into structured and organised HTML files: several HTML files are produced for the website and one HTML file is produced for the printed catalogue, using reduced content. The files are converted using the Jekyll static site generator.

Outputs

HTML files for the website
An HTML file with all the content for the printed version
A GitLab repository for managing the project with others

Notes

Jekyll was chosen because it allowed us to work with Zotero.

Layout

Actors

Antoine Fauchié: toolchain design
Julie Blanc: graphic design and web development

Tools

Jekyll
HTML
CSS
Paged.js
Chrome

Tasks

CSS and Paged.js layout for the printed version and for the web version

Outputs

Responsive website
Preview of the printed book in the browser using Paged.js

Notes

Use of scripts:

  • Jekyll microtypo to improve microtypography

  • Jekyll scholar: Jekyll plugin to manage the display of bibliographic citations and bibliographies

  • Better BibTeX: Zotero plugin to generate bibliography exports

  • Page reorganisation script for full-page images

Exporting

Actors

Antoine Fauchié: toolchain design
Julie Blanc: graphic design and web development

Tools

Chrome

Tasks

Exporting the PDF in RGB from the browser

Preparing the files for printing => this was done by the printer + photoengraver who created the Pantone images + replaced the CMYK images

Outputs

Responsive website
Ready to Print PDF CMYK + Pantone

Notes

Printing

Actors

Ménard Imprimerie, Labège

Tools

Netlify
Offset printing CMYK and Pantone (876U)

Tasks

Print run of 2,000 copies
Sewn perfect binding
Website hosting on Netlify

Outputs

Responsive website online
Print edition with different content: more content on the website than in the print edition

Notes

The author found it incredible to see the website take shape at the same time as he was writing.