Why convert TEI editions to XML?
For several years, it was possible to view texts encoded with teilite.dtd on line using the SGML-browser or browser-plugin from Softquad (Panorama) or MultiDocPro. Panorama was sold to Citec and is no longer supported. MultiDocPro has been terminated as a product but is still available. Anyone who has worked with Panorama understands why XML was developed, for classic SGML proved far too brittle for online parsing and display.
Gradually, the level 5 mainline browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla) and Opera began to support well-formed XML markup and other major features such as Unicode (UTF-8) encoding. Their support of Cascading Style Sheets became more complete, so that it is now possible to use CSS sheets to control the display of files marked up with xteilite.dtd, the modified, XML-conformant version of teilite.dtd Indeed, with Mozilla, it is also possible to select alternate style sheets (under "View") and to display attributes to the left or right of their element (hence to display line numbers). Stylesheets can be written in Morphon, XMLSpy, or any other stylesheet editor that can read the xteilite.dtd.
Support for images and TEI native XLINK and XREF is still weak, however, so it is necessary to mix in HTML tags from the xml namespace for HTML. Support for JavaScript is a little shakey in Mozilla and Opera as yet, but is robust in Internet Explorer.
The emergence of Unicode and availability of (free) Unicode-supporting fonts is a great advance over the elaborate catalogs and inclusions of character entities. The WGL4 ("international") versions of Microsoft's basic fonts (Times New Roman, Georgia, Arial, Verdana) now standardly loaded on Windows machines provide glyphs for most of the ISO character sets for European languages and in addition certain useful typographic marks. Here is a short table of these marks:
| mdash | ldquo | rdquo | lsquo | rsquo | hellip |
| #8212; | #8220; | #8221; | #8216; | #8217; | #8230; |
| — | “ | ” | ‘ | ’ | … |
In sum, the late-model browsers are capable of displaying TEI-tagged texts with no special plugins or modifications at the server (e.g. conversion to HTML).
How can standard TEI files be converted to XML?
The best way to do a conversion is to use the tei-emacs package from http://www.tei-c.org. That contains the xteilite.dtd for loading and validating as you modify the file. Here is a little guide to quick and dirty conversion.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: This is based on the Tolkien edition and contains many yogh's (ʒ). This character is only found in the IPA Extensions, which are not supported by WGL4 fonts, but are by the free lucida sans unicode readily available online. Alternate style sheets allow you to view the file with line numbers visible or not—but only in Mozilla.
Yeats' Michael Robartes and the Dancer: Based on the handset Cuala Press edition of 1920, this includes images of Renaissance art works mentioned in the poems and popup windows identifying various persons mentioned and linking to pages on them. This and the next file use the TITLE attribute of the HTML anchor link to provide information about the link, so linger over the arrow just a moment. The popups and TITLE messages work better on MSIE.
W. E.B. Dubois' Souls of Black Folk: This edition, set in motion by Brad Benz, contains midi versions of the songs which preface the chapters, numerous notes, and links to the texts of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington discussed in Souls.
Where are files marked up with TEILite to be found? Some of the main archives have stopped serving the main files as options and convert them to HTML on the fly. Many remain online and are being added to.