<oo>→<vil> XML and TEI for Slavic philology

Description and goals

This four-day hands-on workshop provides eleven hours of instruction in using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines for the encoding and description of medieval manuscript materials. The instructors are:

• David J. Birnbaum, a medieval Slavic philologist who teaches digital humanities at the University of Pittsburgh (djbpitt@gmail.com, http://www.obdurodon.org)
• Lou Burnard, formerly assistant director at Oxford University Computing Services, and one of the original editors of the Text Encoding Initiative. (lou,burnard@gmail.com, http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lou)

The workshop is part of the Textual heritage and information technologies (El’Manuscript-2016) conference, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2016-08-22–2016-08-26

Before the workshop

• Download the <oXygen/> XML editor from http://www.oxygenxml.com and install it on your laptop. You will need to request a free, fully-functional thirty-day license, which you can do at the download site.
• You will also need to download downloadMe.zip and unpack it. It contains the sample documents we will be working with and scripts for the exercises.
• Read: An even gentler introduction to XML.
• If you have time, also read What is the Text Encoding Initiative? (also available in French)
• In the hands-on portion of the workshop we will work with Church Slavonic and other early Slavic manuscript materials. If you would prefer, you are welcome instead to bring your own materials (plain-text manuscript description or transcription).

Workshop schedule

Tuesday, 2016-08-23

• Session 1, 17:15–18:15: Introduction to XML [DJB] (slides )

Wednesday, 2016-08-24

• Session 2, 14:30–15:30: Using <oXygen/> with TEI [LB] (slides)
• Session 3, 16:00–17:00: Introduction to TEI [LB] (slides)

Thursday, 2016-08-25

• Session 4, 9:00–10:00: Manuscript description [DJB] (slides )
  • Don’t click; download: Description of the Enina Apostol (XML file)
  • Section 10 of TEI P5: Manuscript description
  • Encyclopaedia Slavica Sanctorum
  • The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (search for Ivan Alexander; UK, London, British Library, Add MS 39627; in English)
  • Stanislav’s menologion (September, October, November; in Bulgarian)
  • Manuscripts at Kliment Oxridski University, Sofia
  • Catalog of Icelandic manuscripts at the Árni Magnússon Institute, Reykjavík (in Icelandic; some content also in English and Danish)
• Session 5, 10:30–11:30: Manuscript description [LB] practical 1 (Creating a manuscript description ). The manuscript description file we work with in this session and the next is available in Microsoft Word docx and LibreOffice odt formats. Don’t peek at our solution in TEI XML (not the only possible one) before you’ve tried it yourself!
• Session 6, 11:45–12:45: Manuscript description [LB] practical 2 (Creating a manuscript description )
• Session 7, 13:45–14:45: An Introduction to Manuscript transcription [LB] (slides )
• Session 8, 15:00–16:00: Manuscript transcription [DJB] practical. Vita Pauli simplicis, 19 March from the Codex Suprasliensis.
  • Tutorial instructions (also available in PDF )
  • Images by folio, with diplomatic transcription and Greek parallel: 85v, 86r, 86v, 87r, 87v, 88r, 88v
  • Plain text diplomatic transcription
  • Our solution (not the only possible one) in TEI XML. Don’t peek before you’ve tried it yourself!

Friday, 2016-08-26

• Session 9, 9:00–10:00: Transforming TEI XML with XSLT (lecture)
  • TEI Tools [LB] (toolbox )
  • Introduction to XPath and XSLT [LB] (overview )

• Session 10, 10:30–11:30: Transforming TEI XML with XSLT [LB] (handout and XML file)

  To find the <change> element with the most recent date, regardless of the order of the <change> elements within <revisionDesc>, use: //change[xs:date(@when) eq max(//change/@when/xs:date(.))] . The meaning is: find all <change> elements and filter them to keep the one with a @when date that is equal to the largest of all of the @when dates on all <change> elements. In Real Life we would make this more robust by restricting the context to sibling <change> elements that are children of the <revisionDesc>; this version happens to work because there are no <change> elements in this particular document that are not in this context anyway.

• Session 11, 11:45–12:45: XSLT, continued; wrap-up
  • XSLT with participant data: John Quincy Adams personography [DJB] (original Excel spreadsheet, Ox Garage TEI XML output, pull stylesheet, push stylesheet, TEI XML personography output); part of the Massachusetts Historical Society Adams family papers: An electronic archive project
  • Taking stock [DJB] (What’s next? )

Documents