TEI by Example Module 8: Customising TEI, ODD, Roma Ron Van den Branden Edward Vanhoutte Melissa Terras Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) Centre for Data, Culture and Society, University of Edinburgh, UK Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH), University College London, UK Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London, UK Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium
ctb@kantl.be Edward Vanhoutte Melissa Terras Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Gent
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium

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9 July 2010 TEI By Example. Edward Vanhoutte Ron Van den Branden Melissa Terras

Digitally born

TEI By Example offers a series of freely available online tutorials walking individuals through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Besides a general introduction to text encoding, step-by-step tutorial modules provide example-based introductions to eight different aspects of electronic text markup for the humanities. Each tutorial module is accompanied with a dedicated examples section, illustrating actual TEI encoding practise with real-life examples. The theory of the tutorial modules can be tested in interactive tests and exercises.

 en-GB proofing corrections revision updated to Pure ODD + RomaJS added distinction gi — gi scheme="..." — tag final spellcheck release updated to TEI P5-1.2.0 + Roma 3.5 (04/11/2008) corrected errors + typos corrected typos elaborated on didactic motivations for some choices in the tutorial replaced Alice’s Adventures Under Ground example with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland due to copyright concerns with the images revisions creation
Customising TEI: Why and How?

As with all other TBE tutorial modules, we’ll start from a concrete text example. This time, we’ll consider Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Suppose we’re at the start of a project that will encode this text. To get a sense of the structure of the document, here are the first pages:

First pages of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

A typical page looks like this:

A typical page of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

As always, the first step in approaching the encoding of a text is a document analysis, considering this is a prose work consisting of chapters.

In addition, we are especially interested in the semantic encoding of the names of the different characters and places.

This document analysis allows us to get an idea of the phenomena we want to encode and how to express them in TEI; for a suggestion of the corresponding TEI elements we refer you to the other TBE tutorial modules or the full TEI Guidelines.

However, after completion of this document analysis, we’re not quite ready to start encoding our TEI version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Unless you know TEI by heart, it will be very hard to produce a valid TEI transcription, without a TEI schema.

There are two options to get a TEI schema: Pick one of the sample TEI customisations, available at , in the format of your choice. TEI provides a number of basic customisations, each with their own focus on different aspects of the TEI model. Depending on your needs, these may provide the elements and attributes you need, or you may want to build on them. Create your own schema with the Roma web tool. Although the existing TEI customisations in many cases provide all that’s needed for the encoding of common textual phenomena, and the study of these customisations provides an excellent source of information on customising and modifying TEI, in this tutorial we’ll start from scratch. This way, all concepts can be introduced one at a time, and you will get to learn how to actually interpret existing customisations. Alongside the Roma tool itself, the most important concepts of TEI customisation will be treated, split in two strands: selection and restriction of existing TEI elements and attributes extension of the TEI model with new elements and attributes

Encoding TEI texts with a TEI schema involves customising the TEI. Either you use one of the pre-cooked TEI customisations, or start creating your own with the Roma web tool. Customisation can be roughly divided into selection and restriction of the existing TEI model, and extension of the TEI model.