These cross-references are basically the same thing as the “Index to Luther’s Works” I’ve created here, but in a static, stand-alone HTML format instead of the dynamically-generated, database-dependent format of the main Index. (My “index” is of course not really an index but I started it calling it that casually and without thinking about it much when I first put up this Website's early forms, and now I’m stuck with it.) The intent of providing an HTML version is to make this data more portable—that is, users can download these files to their own computers and thus have them easily at hand anytime, even when they find themselves without an Internet connection. They can also add to them or modify them for their own purposes once they've downloaded them, if they are so inclined and have that ability.
(If you want to download these files, make sure and grab the .css files and the .jpg files as well and put them all in the same directory on your computer. This can all be done through the browser now, but it can be a little complicated, so in the near future I will add the capability to download all the files needed at one time in a compressed file.)
Users can also print them out straight from the browser, though the formatting is not currently the best for that. I plan to improve that in the future also. I will also post a notice whenever I’ve added new volumes.
The first 55 volumes of the American Edition are complete and have references for the three versions currently in the database (AE, StL, and WA). I generated the HTML version for these 55 volumes with a PHP script that constructed an HTML table for each volume out of database queries.
The new volumes of AE (56-82) are very incomplete. So far (as of February 1, 2002), I’ve got only volumes 56-58, 61, and 73 done. I have to manually enter the table of contents of the new volumes into the database as I buy them and then run the script that extracts the data for each volume and constructs an HTML table out of it. AE provides the references to WA in the introduction to each work, as well as at the top of each page, so those will be included in these tables. References to StL usually will not be included unless the AE editors happen to mention them or I come upon them elsewhere.
The volumes for the German St. Louis (revised Walch) version are even more incomplete. For these, I am using the table of contents pages in the digital copies found at https://martinluther.us/. Since I don't know German, the deciphering and translation of the Fraktur typeface is a very slow and laborious process for me. I have to rely upon Google Translate, and on comparisons with the corresponding titles in the American edition when I happen to know that information or can guess it pretty easily. The earlier volumes, which have only a few titles each, are going relatively fast, but I can foresee that this process is soon going to come to a grinding halt. The volumes of letters and sermons, for example, can have more than twenty pages of contents. And there won’t be any references to AE or WA here other than those already in my database, which was created mainly from Vogel's Cross Reference. Vogel used the titles in AE to build a list of references to the other editions, so if a title from the StL table of contents isn't in AE, it won't have a reference here for WA either, except in the very rare cases in which I come across the reference elsewhere. This won’t really be useful as a cross-reference so much as it will be as a content list in English for each volume, which I don’t think I’ve run across anyplace else on the Web. The list of volume titles in English is complete, but so far I’ve created a table of contents for only the first six volumes.