TEI

The TEI Protocol 5 Guidelines were originally developed to allow encoding innumerable kinds of texts in eXtensible Markup Language (XML):1 they offer great lattitude for making decisions as to how to encode any text, as they should. Each decision made will affect how one writes the xslt programs for transforming the documents into HTML web pages and the functioning of the css Cascading Style Sheets. These programs are also affected by file structure on the basis of which they create links among the documents comprising your edition. Because this textbook provides you with xslt and css files that you can use to create an edition, the instructions given in "TEI Rules for Digital Editions, Start to Finish" articulate "rules" that are NOT mandated by the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines as well as some that are. The reason: so that your TEI documents encoded according to this textbook's instructions can be run using the xslts provided here to effectively produce web pages with a specific appearance generated by the css files. Once you learn more about xslt and css, you are most welcome to modify these programs or, of course, create your own.

PowerPoint Instructions

  1. Introduction to TEI
  2. Basic TEI / XML Text Structure
  3. TEI Header

Sample documents and Examples

  1. Download TEI Templates -- these are sample documents that you can use to start creating your own following the rules given here that will allow use of the xslts and css files provided here
  2. Download the Sample Digital Edition created following all the instructions and rules provided in this textbook. This Digital Edition contains stories, essays, plays, criticism, and poetry, in order to provide examples of as many genres as possible. To use this DigEd System:
    • Rename the "DigitalEdition" with a name appropriate to your project.
    • Save into the XML folder your own TEI / XML documents, encoded according to the rules offered here.
    • Delete the HTML and text folders: they will be recreated when you transform your TEI documents.
    • Put your own images into the images folder.
    • Save into the people folder your own personography, or delete the folder.
  3. View the documents in the DigEd folder to see how your documents will look.
  4. View a digital edition coded and transformed according to the instructions provided by this textbook but altered using skills taught by the textbook.
  5. Visit TEI by Example
  6. Download TEI Templates at the TAPAS Project

TEI Encoding

Here are the rules (pdf) you need to follow for using the recommended file structure, xslt, and css files made available as part of the DigitalEdition folder.

Notes

1. The Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines make recommendations for how to encode XML documents. The hope is that scholars following these guidelines will create documents that are interoperable because encoded using the same tag names and schemas. Granting agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities frequently require TEI encoding. For more information, please see the Introduction to TEI PowerPoint (item #1 above), the Introduction to this web textbook, Charlotte Roueché, "Why Do We Mark Up Texts?" (in Collaborative Research in the Digital Humanities, ed. Willard McCartny, Marilyn Deegan, 2010, New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 155-162), and David Birnbaum, "What is XML and Why Should Humanists Use It?"  Back

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Digital Editions, Start to Finish by Laura Mandell is marked with CC0 1.0Creative Commons License IconCreative Commons Zero License Image

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