Unceded territory of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations

This Workshop

TEI Workshop homepage: http://www.sfu.ca/~takeda/teiworkshop/

Slides: http://www.sfu.ca/~takeda/teiworkshop/2022-10-26/

Introduction to text encoding

Overview of XML and TEI

TEI Editing practice!

Quick Activity: Transcribing

Imagine you're creating an edition of The Tempest

Try formatting Miranda's famous speech, including everything you think may be important to capture
(Downloadable DOCX of speech)

Try to make the formatting as close to the original as possible

Link

Activity Recap

What did you notice about the text? What did you include in your transcription?

Encoding

All acts of transcription and writing are about encoding

Looking at textual clues to know what something is (and what it isn't)

E.g. We think (English) paragraphs look like blocks of text; (English) sentences look like words with a period at the end; et cetera

Encoding, markup, et cetera...

The Tempest

Italics to mark speech prefix; placement of the page's signature; etc

Encoding, markup, et cetera

But these are contextual and local

E.g. different types of punctuation for levels of quotation

And they are subject to varying interpretations

E.g. I think these quotation marks denote a term, but maybe the author is just being sarcastic...

Why should we encode texts?

Accessibility

Distribution

Flexibility

Interoperability

Convertibility (i.e. from one format to another)

Analysis (Distant Reading, et cetera)

Answering existing (and asking new) research questions

How do we encode texts?

In the beginning: symbols (_underlined_ | **italicized** | ~struckout~)

This describes formatting nicely, but doesn't describe *what* it is

XML (Markup)

XML is Everywhere

HTML (HyperText Markup Language: Every website)

KML (Keyhole Markup Language: Google Maps)

RDF (Resource Description Framework: Library catalogues)

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics: Digital Images)

OOXML (Open Office XML: This presentation, word documents, et cetera)

XML

XML is hierarchical

XML is a tree-like structure

And is often described in genealogical terms

XML

Think of the hierarchy of the book:

Book

Chapters

Sections

Paragraphs

Sentences

Words

Letters

XML

 <book>
    <chapter>
        <section>
            <paragraph>
                <sentence>
                    <word>
                        <letter></letter>
                    </word>
                </sentence>
            </paragraph>
        </section>
    </chapter>
</book> 
             
                
            

XML Explained

The two pointy brackets is called an element

E.g. <book> would be called the book element

All elements have start and end tags

E.g. <book> is the start tag and </book> is the end tag

XML Explained

Elements can also have attributes and each attribute must have a value

E.g. <book type= "primary"> has a type attribute with the value of primary

(Think of attributes as you would in everyday life; people don't have "height" or "age" without a value)

XML Explained

Elements cannot overlap

<sentence><word>Word1</word></sentence> is right

<sentence><word>Word1</sentence></word> is wrong

Elements nest and use genealogical terms

E.g. the <book> is the parent of <chapter>. Words are descendants of a paragraph.

XML Explained

There is always a root element

 <shelf>
    <book title="Fifteen Dogs" author="André Alexis">
        <chapter>
            ...
        </chapter>
    </book>
    <book title="I Am A Cat" author="Natsume Sōseki">
        <chapter>
            <section>
                ...
            </section>
         </chapter>
    </book>
 </shelf>
            

            

XML Explained

<bookcase>
    <shelf>
        <book title="Fifteen Dogs" author="André Alexis">
             ...
        </book>
        <book title="I Am A Cat" author="Natsume Sōseki">
            ...
        </book>
    </shelf>
    <shelf>
        <book title="Chorus of Mushrooms" author="Hiromi Goto">
            ...
        </book>
        <book title="The Jade Peony" author="Wayson Choy">
            ...
        </book>
    </shelf>
</bookcase>
            

            

Questions? (Break?)

The Problem

https://xkcd.com/927/

The TEI Solution

All texts must be called <text>

All divisions (whether they be chapters, sections, et cetera) must be called <div>

All paragraphs must be called <p>

All words must be called <w>

+++

The TEI

A set of guidelines for encoding text

A non-profit organization

A community or consortium of users

Website: https://tei-c.org/

The TEI

Currently in its 5th major revision (P5 4.5.0)

Used by many projects across the world in many different languages and for many different reasons

Who uses the TEI?

Components of a (basic) TEI file

Root <TEI> element

A <teiHeader> that describes both the file and the primary source that you are transcribing (if applicable)

A <text> that contains the text of the document

Within text, you can have a <front>, <body>, or <back>

TEI

                
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
  <teiHeader>
      <fileDesc>
         <titleStmt>
            <title>Title</title>
         </titleStmt>
         <publicationStmt>
            <p>Publication Information</p>
         </publicationStmt>
         <sourceDesc>
            <p>Information about the source</p>
         </sourceDesc>
      </fileDesc>
  </teiHeader>
  <text>
      <body>
         <p>Some text here.</p>
      </body>
  </text>
</TEI>
                
            

What the TEI is not

A language that describes how a text should be displayed online or in print: "performative and expressive significance of the input" vs "the aesthetics of the output".

A programming language: encoding your texts in TEI does not automatically do anything to them

Caveat: There are many, many tools for transforming TEI into other formats (Word documents, PDFs, and, of course, websites)

The TEI

Offers a rich vocabulary and method to encode:

TEI

Note that the TEI is huge (585 elements)

No one uses the entirety of the TEI tagset

Individual projects customize the TEI for their own needs, usually using a small subset of the overall tagset

E.g. Drama projects will use the drama tagset (<sp> for speech, <speaker> for speaker, et cetera) and discard the linguistic/dictionary tagset (<entry> for dictionary entries, <m> for morpheme, etc).

Questions so far?

The Guidelines: Some Examples

Encoding Exercise!

Let's try encoding the speech!

Online editor: https://sfu.ca/~takeda/teiworkshop/2022-10-26/index.html

Recap

Thoughts? Reflections?

Resources

TEI Guidelines: https://tei-c.org

TEI By Example: https://teibyexample.org/

Get in touch!

My email: takeda@sfu.ca

Digital Humanities Innovation Lab: dhil@sfu.ca

DHIL's website: https://dhil.lib.sfu.ca

Thanks!

You all for attending!

Thanks to Ali Moore, Nicole White, and Sarah Zhang for your suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this workshop