XML >
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XML is usually thought of as a markup technique utilized by programmers
to encode computer-oriented data. Even DocBook and similar
document-oriented DTDs focus on preparation of technical documentation.
However, the real roots of XML are in the SGML community, which is
largely composed of publishers, archivists, librarians, and scholars.
In this installment, David looks at Text Encoding Initiative, an XML
schema devoted to the markup of literary and linguistic texts. TEI
allows useful abstractions of typographic features of source documents,
but in a manner that enables effective searching, indexing, comparison,
and print publication -- something not possible with publications
archived as mere photographic images.
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a decade older than XML itself,
and older than other common documentation encoding XML schemas
like DocBook. Specifically, TEI was developed -- in initial SGML
form -- in 1987, almost an eternity in Internet time. Despite its age,
TEI works at a different level than any other markup format that I
am aware of, and remains the best solution to a certain class of
problems.
Basically, TEI aims to encode all the semantically significant aspects
of literary texts, both old ones that predate XML technology (or
indeed, computers in general) and newly created ones. Certainly the
words themselves are the most important semantic feature of prose or
poetical texts. But throughout the history of print -- or of writing
in general -- other typographic features have been added to texts to
encode subsidiary aspects of their meaning. The use of presentation elements --
such as various types of emphasis,
indentation and margins, tables, pagination, line breaks (as in
verse), graphics, and decorations -- has
enhanced, elaborated, or modified the meanings of the words in books,
essays, pamphlets, flyers, bills, poems, liturgicals, and all the
other forms literary works take.
Moreover, mere typographic features sometimes require an interpretive
effort to fully decipher. As a trivial example, many books use italics
to mark both foreign words and to mark the titles of other books. The
semantic aspect of italicization depends on the verbal context, but
clearly authors usually use such marks with distinct intentions. TEI
aims to allow the markup of texts in a way that distinguishes all such
meaningful aspects.
TEI is not really just an XML schema, it is more like a whole family
of schemas, related in their general goal but varying in details of
the tags and attributes used. In part, these schemas differ in being
supported by different DTDs (or RELAX NG schemas). For example,
TEI-Lite is a greatly simplified form of TEI that aims to support "90%
of the needs of 90% of the TEI user community" (according to the TEI Web site).
And other specializations are available as well. But even apart from actual
specializations or subsets of the full TEI tag set, most users will
utilize only a few of the tags available in the TEI DTD they are
using. Different documents demand different markup, and different
projects allow differing degrees of granularity.
An example of what TEI can do
Project Gutenberg is an effort to provide free versions
of literary and historical works to a general audience. Thousands of
titles have been transcribed and verified by the project's contributors.
According to the "History and Philosophy" page on the Project Gutenberg site (see Resources),
the goal is to produce texts in plain vanilla ASCII.
For Project Gutenberg publications, any kind of emphasis is represented by
capitalization, and paragraphs are divided with blank lines. While
readers can reconstruct many conventional features of Project Gutenberg texts, TEI
aims to mark these features explicitly. However, TEI is likely to be harder to
read unless rendered in a prettified form through some
tranformation tool. But simultaneously, TEI is much easier to process
and analyze with automated tools.
For example, Project Gutenberg makes available Shakespeare's King Lear. A short
portion of this delightful play is transcribed as:
Listing 1. Project Gutenberg version of King Lear
Kent.
Now by Apollo, king,
Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.
Lear.
O vassal! miscreant!
[Laying his hand on his sword.]
Alb. and Corn.
Dear sir, forbear!
Kent.
Do;
Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow
Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,
I'll tell thee thou dost evil.
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A great deal of implicit semantic content could be added, using TEI. For example:
Listing 2. TEI version of King Lear
<sp><speaker>Kent</speaker>
<p>Now by Apollo, king,<lb/>
Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.<lb/></p></sp>
<sp><speaker>Lear</speaker>
<p>O vassal! miscreant!<lb/></p></sp>
<p><stage>Laying his hand on his sword.</stage><p>
<sp><speaker>Alb. and Corn.</speaker>
<p>Dear sir, forbear!<lb/></p></sp>
<sp><speaker>Kent.</speaker>
<p>Do;<lb/>
Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow<lb/>
Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,<lb/>
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,<lb/>
I'll tell thee thou dost evil.<lb/></p></sp>
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This markup is the same as that suggested by David Seaman in the article
on this topic (see Resources).
However, this style is perhaps still not
sufficiently semantically rich. The tag <lb/> indicates a line
break, which is simply a typographic feature that might be rendered in
print. This is similar to HTML's <br/> element, DocBook's
<LiteralLayout> , or LaTeX's \newline .
But TEI can be more
specific if you wish to consider the verse structure of Shakespeare. For example: TEI King Lear with explicit meter
<sp><speaker>Kent.</speaker><lg>
<l part="Y">Do;</l>
<l part="N">Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow</l>
<l part="N">Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,</l>
<l part="N">Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,</l>
<l part="N">I'll tell thee thou dost evil.</l></lg></sp>
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Here Kent's speech is described as a line group rather than simply
as a paragraph. Moreover, each line is optionally qualified -- the
first as metrically complete.
Such qualification is optional, and other part attribute values
exist.
The degree of descriptive specificity lets scholars answer literary
questions by automated means. For example, "Which speakers in
Shakespeare's plays tend to speak metrically incomplete lines (and how
does that influence the intended perception of those characters)?"
Working from a simple printed version or from a markup format --
either purely typographically-oriented like LaTeX or XSL-FO, or one
at a coarse semantic level like DocBook or HTML (or plain vanilla
ASCII) -- does nothing specifically to aid such research. TEI brings
some automation to many areas of literary scholarship.
Additionally, from a document preparation perspective, you are free to
utilize rich semantic marks -- or to ignore them -- as the publication
requirements demand. As a somewhat simplistic example, think of
those editions of the New Testament that mark all the speech
directly attributed to Jesus in red ink. A TEI markup could simply
indicate speakers, then such typographic issues could be decided as
part of the print process; there would be no need for something like an
explicit color="red" attribute in the markup. Other works could be
prepared using similar conventions for marking significant elements
of the text.
Other advantages of TEI
Obviously, most writing is not meter and poetry. But at every level,
TEI offers varying degrees of typographic and semantic markup
options. Understand here that the emphasis in TEI's typographic markup
is not primarily focused on how a text should be rendered in future
publication, but rather on how it was rendered in the past. For
example, philosophical scholars who study Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason refer frequently to the "A" and the "B" versions -- that is,
Kant made a number of significant conceptual changes between his first
and second edition. This convention is important enough that most
editions of the Critique contain marginal notes indicating A and B
page ranges (the two versions are now frequently included in the same publication
as separate sections). The marginal notes refer to where given paragraphs
occurred in the original (German) revisions; generally, the modern
editions -- especially translated ones -- have quite different pagination
than these first editions. TEI is probably the only markup convention
in widespread use that suffices to properly annotate the Critique.
At an inline markup level, TEI allows for both typographic
and semantic markup elements. For simple typographic notations, the
tag <hi> can be used with the optional
rend attribute. For
example, <hi rend="italics"> indicates that a given word or phrase
was or should be rendered in italics. But if it can be determined
why a phrase was italicized (it is both unambiguous, and sufficient
effort is available to analyze the text), you might choose to use a
tag such as <title> , <foreign> , or <emph> , which more specifically
describe the reason why the author or publisher italicized the phrase.
In addition, with the text so marked, you might decide, for example, to underline rather than
italicize titles in a later edition.
The examples I have given only touch on the markup capabilities in
TEI. TEI probably has more markup available than any one person can
remember all at once. Fortunately, as I mentioned, TEI is generally
designed to be usefully subsetted for specific tasks. For a certain
goal or project, the best strategy is to decide in advance which few
TEI tags you want to use. Developers, writers, or archivists can
learn such a small subset with only a modest effort.
Tools and TEI
In a general sense, any tool that can work with XML can work with TEI.
DTDs are available for several TEI variations, as are XSLT stylesheets
of various sorts. Naturally, customizations for working with TEI in
Emacs, Framemaker, and MS-Word can be found at the TEI Web site. An
XMetal customization is also downloadable.
An interesting online tool provided by the initiative lets you
customize an XSLT stylesheet to produce just the HTML output you
desire. A Web form lets you select a variety of options, then returns
a stylesheet reflecting your customizations (see Resources).
A number of scripts and tools are available for conversion of TEI-formatted
documents into documents that are closer to the final print output. In the
main, these target either LaTeX or XSL-FO as an intermediate format.
These are the usual command-line tool chains that text processing
programmers are accustomed to.
One tool I have grown quite fond of is the Java-based XML editor,
oXygen. I have reviewed this product in the past, and since then it
has continued to get better. In addition to being one of the first
XML editors to incorporate RELAX NG support, the newest version of
oXygen now includes a nice set of TEI templates -- just select one, and
oXygen creates a document skeleton (and assists you in validation and
tag entry as you go along). But most impressive of all, the XSL-FO
stylesheets that also come bundled just work. I was able to create a
couple of nice looking PDFs out of my TEI tests without spending hours
configuring tool chains and reading obscure how-tos.
Resources - Participate in the TEI home page
for more information on the Text Encoding initiative. Within the site,
you'll find a number of resources, including an interesting look at a Project Gutenberg, which has brought literary history to readers, free of charge and in electronic form, since 1971. A
large collection of public domain literary works are available there,
encoded as simple ASCII "etexts." One such work is Shakespeare's
King Lear, which I use as an illustration in this column.
- Find out more about the history and philosophy of Project Gutenberg.
- Read David Seaman's helpful discussion of the XML >
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