[tei-council] Proposed agenda item: Getting started using TEI document

[Arianna Ciula]

Hi Peter,

I like this a lot and would volunteer to help you if the council is in 
favour.

Best,
Arianna

Peter Boot wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> Isn't it time for us to write a true 'getting started using TEI' 
> document? Currently we have a number of in some way introductory texts, 
> but most of them are not really for beginners. The 'Gentle introduction 
> to XML' provides good introductory reading, but is not a guide. The 
> Guidelines chapters 'TEI infrastructure'(ch. 1) and 'Using the TEI' (ch. 
> 23) are way beyond the innocent beginner, someone who is, let's say, 
> writing a thesis on a not very well known text and wants to publish that 
> text along with his thesis. The customisation page on the website is 
> also targeted at someone who is already well embarked as a TEI user.
> 
> If the rest of the council thinks that would be useful, I'd be willing 
> to draft such a document, perhaps together with one or two other council 
> members. I'd expect such a document to be perhaps 15/20 pages long.
> 
> A getting started document should include practical things such as the 
> question which editor to use and how to display the xml. The document 
> would assume a Windows platform, as that is what most prospective users 
> would be familiar with. The document would not be part of the Guidelines 
> (which should be platform and software agnostic), but would be part of 
> the website, perhaps the wiki. Wherever possible, the document would 
> refer to existing documents (such as Guidelines sections).
> 
> What a getting started document might discuss is, among other things, 
> the following:
> - Should you use TEI?
>    Should discuss: nature of material, desired result, competence
>    of encoder, available technical support, intellectual and
>    practical benefits, effort to be expected
> - What you should know
>    Reference to gentle XML introduction
>    Even gentler intro into creating html from xml using xslt
>    (not discuss: pdf creation)
> - Overall structure of a TEI text
>    header, text, body, div, head, p, lg, l
>    Reference to TEI lite chapters
> - Choosing and installing an editor
>    (Limit discussion in doc to single editor?)
> - Load, modify, validate a complete ready-made document
> - Getting standard stylesheets to run
>    Installing XSLT processor
>    Downloading and customising stylesheets
>    Running stylesheets
> - Getting this to work on sample of own text
>    Preparing text in XML vs. converting prepared text to XML
> - Text modelling
>    Choosing elements and attributes
>    Extension: Modifying elements or creating new ones?
> - Schema's
>    Defining a schema using Roma
>    Reference to 'Getting started with P5 ODDs'
>    Using the schema from within the editor
> - Where to go from here
> 
> Can we discuss this in Galway?
> 
> Peter
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-- 
Dr Arianna Ciula
Research Associate
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
2nd Floor
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL (UK)
Tel: +44 (0)20 78481945
http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~aciula/