TEI Lite

TEI Lite

  • a subset of the main TEI schema -- with extensions
  • small, simple
  • realistic for existing texts (OTA, Virginia)
  • realistic for document production (TEI technical documents)
  • A good introduction to TEI Lite is available at http://www.tei-c.org.uk/Lite/

The Structure(s) of a TEI text

  • a text contains a header followed by a text
  • the header contains:
    • file description containing bibliographic information about the machine-readable text itself, and its source
    • encoding description explaining how the electronic text was encoded
    • profile description containing further information about the text
    • revision description containing version control information about the text
  • the text may be unitary or composite
  • a text contains:
    • front matter
    • back matter
    • a body
  • in a composite text, the body is a group of texts (or nested groups)

TEI Structures Summarized 

 
TEI  :: teiHeader text
text :: front? (body|group) back? 
group :: (text|group)+ 
teiCorpus :: teiHeader TEI+

Text divisions

  • generic, hierarchic subdivisions
  • `vanilla' or numbered
  • type attribute
  • associated <head> and <trailer> elements

Global Attributes

  • xml:id for unique identification
  • n for (non-unique) name or number
  • rend for rendition
  • xml:lang for language and hence writing-system

Applicable to all elements in TEI scheme.

Text components

What are divisions composed of?

  • prose is mostly paragraphs (<p>)
  • verse is mostly lines (<l>),sometimes in hierarchic groups (<lg>)
  • drama is mostly speeches (<sp>) containing <p> or <l> and interspersed with stage directions (<stage>)

These may be mixed, and may also appear directly within undivided texts.

Phrase level elements include...

  • typographically highlighted phrases (emphasis, technical terms, foreign language matter, titles, quoted matter, linguistically distinct etc.)
  • data-like (names, numbers, dates, times, addresses)
  • notes and cross references
  • editorial intervention (corrections, regularizations, additions, omissions etc.)

Boundary Points

Texts are not always neatly hierarchic:

  • page and line breaks (<pb>, <lb>, and <cb>)
  • requires left-to-right processing, may not fit well into hierarchical model of XML and XML software

Notes and Cross References

  • Notes of any kind: use <note>
  • in-line or out of line: (use place value to specify) 
     
<lg>
  <l>The self-same moment I could pray </l>
  <l>And from my neck so free </l>
  <l>The albatross fell off, and sank </l>
  <l>Like lead into the sea. 
   <note type="auth" place="margin"> 
   The spell begins to break.</note></l>
</lg>
  • cross references : <ptr> and <ref> 
     
See especially <ref target="SEC12">
 section 12 on page 34</ref>. 
See especially <ptr target="SEC12"/>.
  • target is most conveniently an identifier (id value) 
     
... see especially <ptr target="SEC12"/>. 
... <div1 id="SEC12">
    <head>Concerning Identifiers</head> ...
  • Together, these provide simple hypertext capability.

XML Pointers

With P5, the TEI adopts the use of XML Pointers instead of the TEI Extended Pointers that had been used in previous versions.

The development of XML Pointer languages, including XPath, XPointer and XLink have been strongly influenced by the TEI Extended Pointers.

XPath, XLink and Xpointer are by now W3C Recommendations, together they are are much more general and powerful than the TEI Extended Pointers, therefore the TEI Council decided to adopt them for P5.

Lists

  • for lists of any kind (use type attribute to distinguish)
  • use <label> for two-column lists or as alternative to n attribute
  • may be nested as necessary

Bibliographic References

Use simple <bibl> with subcomponents:

  • <respStmt> (for any kind of responsibility)
  • or <author>, <editor>, etc.
  • <title> with optional level attribute
  • <imprint> groups publication details
  • <biblScope> adds page references etc.

The full Guidelines have the more detailed structured elements <biblItem> and <biblFull>.

Use <listBibl> (a spezialized <list> of bibliographic elements) for a list of references

The TEI Header

  • mandatory
  • independently interchangeable
  • support for librarians
  • support for corpus builders

The File Description contains...

  • five ISBD (International Standard Book Description)areas:
    • titleStmt
    • editionStmt
    • extent
    • publicationStmt
    • seriesStmt
  • sourceDesc
  • notesStmt

The Encoding Description contains...

  • projectDesc
  • samplingDecl
  • editorialDecl
  • tagsDecl
  • refsDecl
  • classDecl

The Profile Description contains...

miscellaneous additional information such as

  • <creation>
  • <langUsage>
  • <textClass>

plus, when the corpus tagset is chosen,

  • textDesc
  • particDesc
  • settingDesc
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