P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange

2.1.1 The TEI Header and its ComponentsTEI: The TEI Header and its Components¶

The teiHeader element should be clearly distinguished from the front matter of the text itself (for which see section 4.5 Front Matter). A composite text, such as a corpus or collection, may contain several headers, as further discussed below. In the general case, however, a TEI-conformant text will contain a single teiHeader element, followed by a single text or facsimile element, or both.

2.1.2 Types of Content in the TEI HeaderTEI: Types of Content in the TEI Header¶

2.2.1 The Title StatementTEI: The Title Statement¶

The title element contains the chief name of the electronic work, including any alternative title or subtitles it may have. It may be repeated, if the work has more than one title (perhaps in different languages) and takes whatever form is considered appropriate by its creator. Where the electronic work is derived from an existing source text, it is strongly recommended that the title for the former should be derived from the latter, but clearly distinguishable from it, for example by the addition of a phrase such as ‘: an electronic transcription’ or ‘a digital edition’. This will distinguish the electronic work from the source text in citations and in catalogues which contain descriptions of both types of material.

The electronic work will also have an external name (its ‘filename’ or ‘data set name’) or reference number on the computer system where it resides at any time. This name is likely to change frequently, as new copies of the file are made on the computer system. Its form is entirely dependent on the particular computer system in use and thus cannot always easily be transferred from one system to another. Moreover, a given work may be composed of many files. For these reasons, these Guidelines strongly recommend that such names should not be used as the title for any electronic work.

Helpful guidance on the formulation of useful descriptive titles in difficult cases may be found in the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (Gorman and Winkler, 1978, chapter 25) or in equivalent national-level bibliographical documentation.

The elements author, editor, sponsor, funder, and principal, are specializations of the more general respStmt element. These elements are used to provide the statements of responsibility which identify the person(s) responsible for the intellectual or artistic content of an item and any corporate bodies from which it emanates.

Any number of such statements may occur within the title statement. At a minimum, identify the author of the text and (where appropriate) the creator of the file. If the bibliographic description is for a corpus, identify the creator of the corpus. Optionally include also names of others involved in the transcription or elaboration of the text, sponsors, and funding agencies. The name of the person responsible for physical data input need not normally be recorded, unless that person is also intellectually responsible for some aspect of the creation of the file.

Where the person whose responsibility is to be documented is not an author, sponsor, funding body, or principal researcher, the respStmt element should be used. This has two subcomponents: a name element identifying a responsible individual or organization, and a resp element indicating the nature of the responsibility. No specific recommendations are made at this time as to appropriate content for the resp: it should make clear the nature of the responsibility concerned, as in the examples below.

Names given may be personal names or corporate names. Give all names in the form in which the persons or bodies wish to be publicly cited. This would usually be the fullest form of the name, including first names.⁵

2.2.2 The Edition StatementTEI: The Edition Statement¶

For printed texts, the word edition applies to the set of all the identical copies of an item produced from one master copy and issued by a particular publishing agency or a group of such agencies. A change in the identity of the distributing body or bodies does not normally constitute a change of edition, while a change in the master copy does.

For electronic texts, the notion of a ‘master copy’ is not entirely appropriate, since they are far more easily copied and modified than printed ones; nonetheless the term edition may be used for a particular state of a machine-readable text at which substantive changes are made and fixed. Synonymous terms used in these Guidelines are version, level, and release. The words revision and update, by contrast, are used for minor changes to a file which do not amount to a new edition.

No simple rule can specify how ‘substantive’ changes have to be before they are regarded as producing a new edition, rather than a simple update. The general principle proposed here is that the production of a new edition entails a significant change in the intellectual content of the file, rather than its encoding or appearance. The addition of analytic coding to a text would thus constitute a new edition, while automatic conversion from one coded representation to another would not. Changes relating to the character code or physical storage details, corrections of misspellings, simple changes in the arrangement of the contents and changes in the output format do not normally constitute a new edition, whereas the addition of new information (e.g. a linguistic analysis expressed in part-of-speech tagging, sound or graphics, referential links to external data sets) almost always does.

Clearly, there will always be borderline cases and the matter is somewhat arbitrary. The simplest rule is: if you think that your file is a new edition, then call it such. An edition statement is optional for the first release of a computer file; it is mandatory for each later release, though this requirement cannot be enforced by the parser.

Note that all changes in a file, whether or not they are regarded as constituting a new edition or simply a new revision, should be independently noted in the revision description section of the file header (see section 2.5 The Revision Description).

The edition element should contain phrases describing the edition or version, including the word edition, version, or equivalent, together with a number or date, or terms indicating difference from other editions such as new edition, revised edition etc. Any dates that occur within the edition statement should be marked with the date element. The n attribute of the edition element may be used as elsewhere to supply any formal identification (such as a version number) for the edition.

One or more respStmt elements may also be used to supply statements of responsibility for the edition in question. These may refer to individuals or corporate bodies and can indicate functions such as that of a reviser, or can name the person or body responsible for the provision of supplementary matter, of appendices, etc., in a new edition. For further detail on the respStmt element, see section 3.11 Bibliographic Citations and References.

2.2.3 Type and Extent of FileTEI: Type and Extent of File¶

For printed books, information about the carrier, such as the kind of medium used and its size, are of great importance in cataloguing procedures. The print-oriented rules for bibliographic description of an item's medium and extent need some re-interpretation when applied to electronic media. An electronic file exists as a distinct entity quite independently of its carrier and remains the same intellectual object whether it is stored on a magnetic tape, a CD-ROM, a set of floppy disks, or as a file on a mainframe computer. Since, moreover, these Guidelines are specifically aimed at facilitating transparent document storage and interchange, any purely machine-dependent information should be irrelevant as far as the file header is concerned.

This is particularly true of information about file-type although library-oriented rules for cataloguing often distinguish two types of computer file: ‘data’ and ‘programs’. This distinction is quite difficult to draw in some cases, for example, hypermedia or texts with built in search and retrieval software.

The use of standard abbreviations for units of quantity is recommended where applicable, here as elsewhere (see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html).

2.2.4 Publication, Distribution, etc.TEI: Publication, Distribution, etc.¶

The publisher is the person or institution by whose authority a given edition of the file is made public. The distributor is the person or institution from whom copies of the text may be obtained. Where a text is not considered formally published, but is nevertheless made available for circulation by some individual or organization, this person or institution is termed the release authority.

Note that the dates, places, etc., given in the publication statement relate to the publisher, distributor, or release authority most recently mentioned. If the text was created at some date other than its date of publication, its date of creation should be given within the profileDesc element, not in the publication statement. Give any other useful dates (e.g., dates of collection of data) in a note.

Additional detailed elements may be used for the encoding of names, dates, and addresses, as further described in section 3.5 Names, Numbers, Dates, Abbreviations, and Addresses when the module described in chapter 13 Names, Dates, People, and Places is included in a schema.

2.2.5 The Series StatementTEI: The Series Statement¶

The idno may be used to supply any identifying number associated with the item, including both standard numbers such as an ISSN and particular issue numbers. (Arabic numerals separated by punctuation are recommended for this purpose: 6.19.33, for example, rather than VI/xix:33). Its type attribute is used to categorize the number further, taking the value ISSN for an ISSN for example.

2.2.6 The Notes StatementTEI: The Notes Statement¶

2.2.7 The Source DescriptionTEI: The Source Description¶

A single electronic text may be derived from multiple source documents, in whole or in part. The sourceDesc may therefore contain a listBibl element grouping together bibl, biblStruct, or msDesc elements for each of the sources concerned. It is also possible to repeat the sourceDesc element in such a case. The decls attribute described in section 15.3 Associating Contextual Information with a Text may be used to associate parts of the encoded text with the bibliographic element from which it derives in either case.

2.2.8 Computer Files Derived from Other Computer Files TEI: Computer Files Derived from Other Computer Files ¶

2.3.1 The Project DescriptionTEI: The Project Description¶

2.3.2 The Sampling DeclarationTEI: The Sampling Declaration¶

A sampling declaration which applies to more than one text or division of a text need not be repeated in the header of each such text. Instead, the decls attribute of each text (or subdivision of the text) to which the sampling declaration applies may be used to supply a cross-reference to it, as further described in section 15.3 Associating Contextual Information with a Text.

2.3.3 The Editorial Practices DeclarationTEI: The Editorial Practices Declaration¶

An editorial practices declaration which applies to more than one text or division of a text need not be repeated in the header of each such text. Instead, the decls attribute of each text (or subdivision of the text) to which it applies may be used to supply a cross-reference to it, as further described in section 15.3 Associating Contextual Information with a Text.

2.3.4 The Tagging DeclarationTEI: The Tagging Declaration¶

The tagsDecl element consists of an optional sequence of rendition elements, each of which must bear a unique identifier, followed by an optional sequence of one or more namespace elements, each of which contains a series of tagUsage elements, one for each distinct element from that namespace occurring within the outermost text element of a TEI document. Note that these tagUsage elements must be nested within a namespace element, and cannot appear directly within the tagsDecl element.

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2.3.4.1 RenditionTEI: Rendition¶

The rendition element allows the encoder to specify how one or more elements are rendered in the original source in any of the following ways:

• using an informal prose description
• using a standard stylesheet language such as CSS or XSL-FO
• using a project-defined formal language

One or more such specifications may be associated with elements of a document in two ways:

• the render attribute of the appropriate tagUsage element may be used to indicate a default rendition for all occurrences of the named element
• the global rendition attribute may be used on any element to indicate its rendition, over-riding any supplied default value

The global rend attribute may also be used to supply an informal description of the rendering for an element; if this is supplied in addition to the rendition attribute it takes precedence, just as it also overrides any default specified for that element.

For example, the following schematic shows how an encoder might specify that all p elements are by default to be rendered using one set of specifications identified as style1, while hi elements are to use a different set, identified as style2:

<tagsDecl>
 <rendition xml:id="style1">
   ... description of one default rendition here ...
 </rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="style2">
   ... description of another default rendition here ...
 </rendition>
 <namespace name="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
  <tagUsage gi="p" render="#style1"> ... </tagUsage>
  <tagUsage gi="hi" render="#style2"> ... </tagUsage>
 </namespace>
</tagsDecl>
<!-- elsewhere in the document -->
<p>This paragraph,mostly rendered in style1, contains a few words
<hi>rendered in style2</hi>
</p>
<p rendition="#style2">This paragraph is all rendered in style2</p>
<p>This is back to style1</p>

As noted above, the content of the rendition element may describe the appearance of the source material using prose, a project-defined formal language, or either of the existing standard languages: the Cascading Stylesheet Language (Lie and Bos (eds.) (1999)) and the XML vocabulary for specifying formatting semantics which forms a part of the W3C's Extensible Stylesheet Language (Berglund (ed.) (2006)). The scheme attribute indicates which of these applies to a given rendition element, and takes the following values:

free

Informal free text description

css

Cascading Stylesheet Language

xslfo

Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects

other

A user-defined formal description language

In the following extended example we consider how to capture the appearance of a typical early 20th century titlepage, such as that in the following figure:

bibliography

Elements for the encoding of the information on a titlepage are presented in 4.6 Title Pages; here we consider how we might go about encoding some of the visual information as well, using the rendition element and its corresponding attributes.

First we define a rendition element for each aspect of the source page rendition that we wish to retain. Details of CSS are given in Lie and Bos (eds.) (1999); we use it here simply to provide a vocabulary with which to describe such aspects as font size and style, letter and line spacing, colour, etc. Note that the purpose of this encoding is to describe the original, rather than specify how it should be reproduced, although the two are obviously closely linked.

<tagsDecl>
 <rendition xml:id="center" scheme="css">text-align: center;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="small" scheme="css">font-size: small;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="large" scheme="css">font-size: large;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="x-large" scheme="css">font-size: x-large;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="xx-large" scheme="css">font-size: xx-large</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="expanded" scheme="css">letter-spacing: +3pt;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="x-space" scheme="css">line-height: 150%;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="xx-space" scheme="css">line-height: 200%;</rendition>
 <rendition xml:id="red" scheme="css">color: red;</rendition>
</tagsDecl>

The global rendition attribute can now be used to specify on any element which of the above rendition features apply to it. For example, a title page might be encoded as follows:

<titlePage>
 <docTitle rendition="#center #x-space">
  <titlePart>
   <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#x-large">THE POEMS</hi>
   <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#small">OF</hi>
   <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#red #xx-large">ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE</hi>
   <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#large #xx-space">IN SIX VOLUMES</hi>
  </titlePart>
  <titlePart rendition="#xx-space">
   <lb/> VOLUME I.
  <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#red #x-large">POEMS AND BALLADS</hi>
   <lb/>
   <hi rendition="#x-space">FIRST SERIES</hi>
  </titlePart>
 </docTitle>
 <docImprint rendition="#center">
  <lb/>
  <pubPlace rendition="#xx-space">LONDON</pubPlace>
  <lb/>
  <publisher rendition="#red #expanded">CHATTO &amp; WINDUS</publisher>
  <lb/>
  <docDate when="1904" rendition="#small">1904</docDate>
 </docImprint>
</titlePage>

bibliography

When CSS is used as the underlying language, the scope attribute may be used to specify CSS pseudo-elements. These pseudo-elements are used to target styling for only a portion of the given text. For example, there is a first-letter pseudo-element to target styling of the first letter in the targeted element, while there are the useful before and after pseudo-elements, used often in conjunction with the "content" property to add some styling characters (Unicode provides quite a few) before or after the element content, where these are useful to document the appearance of the source.

For example, assuming that a text has been encoded using the q element to enclose passages in quotation marks, but the quotation marks themselves have been routinely omitted from the encoding, a set of renditions such as the following:

<rendition xml:id="quoteBefore" scheme="css" scope="before">content:
'“';</rendition>
<rendition xml:id="quoteAfter" scheme="css" scope="after">content:
'”';</rendition>

might be used to predefine pseudo-elements quoteBefore and quoteAfter. Where a q element is actually rendered in the source with initial and final quotation marks, it may then be encoded as follows:

<q rendition="#quoteBefore #quoteAfter">Four score and seven years
ago...</q>

2.3.5 The Reference System DeclarationTEI: The Reference System Declaration¶

More than one refsDecl element can be included in the header if more than one canonical reference scheme is to be used in the same document, but the current proposals do not check for mutual inconsistency.

2.3.6 The Classification DeclarationTEI: The Classification Declaration¶

2.3.7 The Application Information ElementTEI: The Application Information Element¶

Each application element identifies the current state of one software application with regard to the current file. This element is a member of the att.datable class, which provides a variety of attributes for associating this state with a date and time, or a temporal range. The ident and version attributes should be used to uniquely identify the application and its major version number (for example, ImageMarkupTool 1.5). It is not intended that an application should add a new application each time it touches the file.

2.4.1 CreationTEI: Creation¶

2.4.2 Language UsageTEI: Language Usage¶

A language element may be supplied for each different language used in a document. If used, its ident attribute should specify an appropriate language identifier, as further discussed in section vi.1. Language identification. This is particularly important if extended language identifiers have been used as the value of xml:lang attributes elsewhere in the document.

2.4.3 The Text ClassificationTEI: The Text Classification¶

The keywords element simply categorizes an individual text by supplying a list of keywords which may describe its topic or subject matter, its form, date, etc. In some schemes, the order of items in the list is significant, for example, from major topic to minor; in others, the list has an organized substructure of its own. No recommendations are made here as to which method is to be preferred. Wherever possible, such keywords should be taken from a recognized source, such as the British Library/Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data in the case of printed books, or a published thesaurus appropriate to the field.

Alternatively, if the keyword vocabulary itself is locally defined, the scheme attribute will point to the local definition, which will typically be held in a taxonomy element within the classDecl part of the encoding description (see section 2.3.6 The Classification Declaration).

The catRef element categorizes an individual text by pointing to one or more category elements using the target attribute, which it inherits from the att.pointing class. The category element (which is fully described in section 2.3.6 The Classification Declaration) holds information about a particular classification or category within a given taxonomy. Each such category must have a unique identifier, which may be supplied as the value of the target attribute for catRef elements which are regarded as falling within the category indicated.

The distinction between the catRef and classCode elements is that the values used as identifying codes are exhaustively enumerated, typically with the header, for the former, while the latter may be used to indicate a more open ended or descriptive classification system.