[Bug-gnupedia] Using the TEI Lite DTD for encoding encyclopedia

[Jean-Daniel Fekete]

Hello to the list.

I just read some of the ideas on this list and would like to argue in
favor of using the TEI Lite XML DTD.

I have been working previously on an encyclopedia project and
decided to follow the recommandations of the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI,
look at http://www.tei-c.org/ for details).   TEI is a "meta-dtd", a set
of rules for encoding
various kinds of texts.  They are now XML compliant and there are very
important points to keep in mind when creating large and distributable
electronic documents such as encyclopedia.  TEI Lite is a useful subset
of the TEI, suitable to encode texts such as encyclopedia.

I have written free tools to translate from TEI to HTML and LaTeX and
there are
several tools around, some better than mine now.  Therefore, adopting
TEI instead of HTML is not a problem in term of access to information.
In
term of management of information, TEI provides important benefits.

For instance, each TEI document has a HEADER and a TEXT.   The header
describes the project, who has done the text, what is the authority of
the
person, and the list of changes, availability, etc.  All this is well
structured and should be there for the document to be "valid" (in the
XML
DTD sense).  Of course, people could cheat, but for a project such as
GNUPedia, having a well crafted header is very important if articles are
to
circulate and evolve.

The header seems the most important point missing to HTML, even if it
can be
faked by asking authors to follow some conventions.  DTD are just
designed
to turn conventions into syntax verified by tools and not by people.

If you want more information, I'd be happy to answer and give you all my

pointers about TEI and encyclopedia.

You can look at my web page.  I have written a paper (in french) about
the
use of TEI for encoding encyclopedia.
http://www.emn.fr/fekete/ps/eurotex2.pdf
The one described exhibits special difficulties but general articles are
just
easy to encode.

--
  Jean-Daniel Fekete
  Ecole des Mines de Nantes, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, La Chantrerie,
  BP 20722, 44307 Nantes Cedex 03, France
  Voice: +33-2-51-85-82-08  | Fax: +33-2-51-85-82-49
  address@hidden | http://www.emn.fr/fekete/