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Genre Encoding Exercises

Following are instructions for the genre encoding exercises, which include samples of prose, poetry, drama and letters.

Toolkit

• Genre Samples to Encode (PDF)
• TEI P5 Guidelines
• Examples of Encoded Genre Samples (XML)

Getting Started

1. Launch Oxygen editor
2. Select "File" from the menu bar
3. Select "New" for new file
4. When the dialog box appears, select "from templates"
5. Scroll down and select "TEI P5 All"
   • Now you have a basic TEI template to work with using the P5 All schema
   • Ignore the TEI Header for now
6. Encode each sample genre in a separate XML file (repeat steps 1-5 for each sample)
   • Copy and paste text from PDF document (easier than transcribing)

Validate

This project uses a schema, which makes sure the XML document is well-structured. Your Oxygen editor automatically knows this information. The Oxygen editor will show you a green box towards the top-right of the editor if the file is valid or a red box if the file is invalid. As you are encoding, validate often to catch errors before they escalate.

To validate and XML/TEI file already open in the Oxygen editor:

• Select the "validate document" icon (red check mark)
• Or in the menus, select "Document" => "Validate" => "Validate Document"

If the file is valid, you will see:

• Green box towards the top-right of the editor
• Green box on the bottom of the editor that reads: "Document is valid"

If the file is invalid, you will see:

• Red box towards the top-right of the editor
• Red box on the bottom of the editor that reads: "Validation-failed. Errors: #"
• Error messages in a bottom pane

Click on each error message to position the cursor near the error (often the error is somewhere before the cursor, often a line or more of code above) If the error message is cut off, right-click on the error message and select "Show message" Once you fix the errors, re-validate the document.