encoding his notes

encoding his notes

Text encoding is a powerful and flexible process whereby documents are transferred to an electronically searchable format for scholarly research. It consists of encoding the text by placing tags around portions of it in order to allow for a variety of display, analysis and reuse. These markup tags identify characteristics of the material and determine how it will display and function on the Internet. After a text is encoded, programmatic languages such as xPath, XSLT and xQuery can be used to help analyzing and interpreting the text, and structuring it for distribution. Therefore, encoded texts are the basis of many digital editions.

There are different digital ways for tagging texts. In the James Rankin Project, we use the XML-TEI encoding languaje due to its versatility and ease of use. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is the primary text encoding language used in digital scholarship today. An XML based language, TEI is a human readable, standardized and controlled vocabulary which helps a computer interpret a file to do a whole variety of actions. Its main deliverable is a set of guidelines which specify encoding methods, focused chiefly in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Linguistics.