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Manuscript Encoding Exercises

Below are links to a few manuscripts. Select one of these or work on one of your own choosing.

Documentation and Resources

• TEI by Example Tutorial on Primary Sources
• TEI P5 Guidelines: Representation of Primary Sources (scroll down past the facsimile sections)
• TEI P5 Guidelines: Manuscript Description (part of TEI Header)
• TEI P5 Guidelines: List of Elements

Encoding Tips

• Reference today's lecture slides as a quick reference for:
  • damage, gap, unclear
  • add, del
  • choice
  • etc.
• Reference the TEI by Example Primary Sources Tutorial for a fuller version of today's lecture slides on the same topics listed above

Sample Manuscripts for Encoding Exercise

• The Walt Whitman Archive Poetry Manuscripts: Includes zoomable images and rendition of manuscript markup
• The Walt Whitman Archive Scribal Documents: Includes large image and rendition of manuscript encoding; good documents for practicing names/dates encoding
• Drafts of Sylvia Plath's "Stings": Includes a handwritten and typewritten version of the poem
• Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" from The First World War Poetry Archive: Presented as a manuscript transcription tutorial which yields the full text of the selected version that you can then encode
• IU Archives Online, Working Men's Institute, Letter from Bennett Penn about whiskey and hurt ankle

Getting Started with the Oxygen XML Editor

Setting Up a New TEI P5 All Template

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"

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.

Preview Encoding

Use the Oxygen supplied preview stylesheet for your manuscript encoding, but keep in mind that the preview may not render perfectly.