Perhaps we should just stop trying to map digital editions to printed ones and instead recognize that we are producing a different type of object, one that we can perhaps call a documentary digital edition. This new object necessarily comprises all three components of a digital publication–the source, the output, and the tools to produce and display it–and it is worth emphasizing again that all three are scholarly products that result from editorial practice.

[…] From the discussion it follows that we could define this new type of editorial object the documentary digital edition, as the recording of as many features of the original document as are considered meaningful by the editors, displayed in all the ways the editors consider useful for the readers, including all the tools necessary to achieve such a purpose.