In the
summer of
TEI-conformant encoded
texts can indicate the parts of a work: that is, they can mark the start and
ends of lines, paragraphs, pages, chapters, acts, and so on; thus such texts
can be processed to produce accurate indexes and concordances. In addition,
speakers in a novel can be identified, tags can be added to show the part of
speech for homographs, and many features of a text can be identified. Such
texts allow students and scholars to do many kinds of research that would not
be possible without them. Indeed, they both enable and stimulate precise
textual and linguistic research. Also, texts encoded with the SGML that are
created for one kind of computing platform or environment can usually be used
on all others -- one of the primary goals of the TEI is to recommend a standard
format for the interchange of texts.
For those of us who are
bungling users of SGML, it is difficult to properly appreciate the enormous
amount of thought and effort that has gone into the preparation of the TEI
guidelines for the use of SGML. We should be thankful to Lou Burnard and C. M.
Sperberg-McQueen, the Editors of the TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text
Encoding and Interchange, and to the many others who worked with them.
The special issue of TEXT Technology edited by Lou Burnard gives a
wealth of information about the use of the SGML following the TEI guidelines.
After reading the articles in this issue, anyone who is serious about using
SGML will want to have the complete TEI Guidelines: 1300 pages of
detailed description, analysis, and examples of the use of the SGML.
The current edition of the Guidelines,
often called the TEI P3, is available in two formats: two 600-page
printed volumes or one CD-ROM (for the Macintosh or for PC with Windows). The
cost for either format is $75.00. They may be ordered from
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen University of Illinois at Chicago Academic Computing Center (M/C 135) 1940 W. Taylor Rm. 124 Chicago IL 60612-7352 USA or from TEI Orders Oxford University 13 Banbury Road Oxford UK In addition,
the TEI Guidelines may be obtained free of charge by anonymous ftp from any of
the following:
ftp-tei.uic.edu (in pub/tei and its subdirectories) info.ex.ac.uk (in pub/SGML/tei/p3) ftp.ifi.uio.no (in pub/SGML/TEI) TEI.cix.chiba-u.ac.jp (in /TEI) I am
confident that readers of the special issue of TEXT Technology will enjoy perusing the articles
about SGML and TEI and will profit from them. They indicate the directions of
text processing for the future.
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