Using the TEI Sourceforge Repository


Licensed under

Born Digital.

16 March 2013Kevin Hawkins add warning that page is outdated 16 March 2013Kevin Hawkins updated info on TEI-Emacs. 27 October 2007Chris Ruotolo Converted to P5

James CummingsInitial composition of file.

James CummingsUpdate to reflect current TEI SVN structure and makefiles

This document is not currently maintained. Please see http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/get.xml for the latest information.

Introduction

The TEI makes its development files openly available on http://tei.sourceforge.net so that users can try out the latest developments and provide feedback about how they think the TEI should develop. This document aims to give a brief introduction to using these files directly from the TEI Sourceforge Subversion Repository in which they are kept. If you simply want to use the most stable versions of the various products of the TEI, then investing time and effort in learning to use the Repository is probably not what you want to.

About Version Control

The Repository uses a Version Control System known as Subversion (svn for short). This tool, like its predecessor CVS (Concurrent Versions System), is a content versioning tool used by many software developers to keep track of changes within their source code tree. Subversion provides the means to store not only the current version of a file, but a record of all changes (and who made those changes) that have occurred to that file. Use of Subversion is particularly common on projects whose development is being undertaken by those in disparate geographical locations, or with multiple developers, since it ensures that changes made by one person are not accidentally removed when another person posts their changes to the source tree.

The Sourceforge site provides more detailed information about Subversion and how to use it; you can browse the TEI repository at https://sourceforge.net/p/tei/code/HEAD/tree/, and you’ll also find documentation there on how to check out files. More detailed instructions are below.

Checking files out of the Repository

Before you start work in the repository, you’ll first need to get yourself a user name on the SourceForge site, and ask the TEI project administrators to give you write-access to the repository.

Then, to check out the contents of the TEI Sourceforge Repository with a simple Unix subversion client, enter a command like this: svn checkout --username=YOURUSERNAME svn+ssh://YOURUSERNAME@svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk tei-code

This will copy all files from the TEI repository into the directory tei-code. The repository contains several modules, all of which will be obtained with this command. If however you only want one (say the P5 module), you can do so by including the module name: svn checkout --username=YOURUSERNAME svn+ssh://YOURUSERNAME@svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk/P5 tei-code

You can also browse the whole Repository using sourceforge’s web-based Repository viewer.

TEI Packages

The TEI sf Repository contains files which are grouped into a small number of discrete packages for release. The following packages are currently maintained:

Prerequisites for use of TEI Modules

These packages and their associated Makefiles and scripts are all developed and tested on a Debian Linux system. While they should work (possibly with customisation) on other Linux systems, they are not designed to work on Microsoft Windows.

If you want to use the scripts provided with these packages, we recommend you to install the following additional software packages:

  • jing
  • perl
  • saxon
  • trang
  • xmllint
  • xsltproc
  • Extensions and Customisations Development Module

    The Extensions and Customisations Development Module provides a location for dissemination of well-known Extensions and Customisations to the TEI DTD.

    None of the customisations or extensions to the TEI should be assumed to reflect the current state of the projects, but are provided as examples of how others have customised the TEI schema in the past.

    Internationalisation Development Package

    This package produces a location for the dissemination, experimentation, and development of TEI’s internationalisation movements. Primarily, this consists of the translation of elements, attributes, and their descriptions into other languages. This allows projects to employ coders using their native language to do markup but have it easily translated back to international ‘English’ TEI. Current languages under development include: English, French, German and Spanish. However, others are planned, if you want to help out, ask about doing so on the TEI-L mailing list.

    P5 Guidelines and Schema Development Package

    This package contains the source files for the development version of the TEI Guidelines and associated schemas. Inside the P5 subversion the sources of the English chapters of the Guidelines are in Source/Guidelines/en/. To allow for internationalization, if translations of the Guidelines are made available they will be located in the same place but under their ISO two-letter language code. The source files of the Guidelines also reference separate specifications of elements, attributes and classes which are maintained in a separate directory Source/Specs/ with internationlization handled internally. Each of these files are in the TEI ODD (One Document Does it all) format. This is a TEI format specifically intended for writing guidelines about encoding, from which schemas and reference documentation can be automatically extracted.

    As part of the P5 subversion module, a Makefile is provided to help generate HTML versions of the TEI Guidelines, create compiled schemas and DTDs, amongst various other possibilities. There are a number of variables that one can change at the beginning of the Makefile. Some of the more important of these are:

    • This is the eXist server storing TEI files used by the fascicule target. Either internet access or a locally served TEI eXist database is needed to use this target. By default this is: http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/Query/
    • This is the default location under which you wish to install files locally if you use the ‘install’ target. By default this is: /usr
    • This is the location of the XSLT stylesheets required for the transformation of ODD files. By default this points to the location of the stylesheets as installed by the TEI Debian Packages: /usr/share/xml/tei/stylesheet however, if you want to use a remote copy of the stylesheets you may wish to change this. One option is to use the stylesheets on the TEI website: http://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/stylesheet/ as the value of this variable.
    • This variable is used to pass options to Roma such as the local source file for the TEI Guidelines. By default this is “--localsource=${DRIVER}.xml
    • This points to the available local source file for the TEI Guidelines. By default this is “${LANGTREE}/guidelines-${LANGUAGE}.xml“, and changing LANGTREE and LANGUAGE would allow the generation of the guidelines in different languages if the source files for those languages exist.

    The makefile has a number of requirements, these include internet access (or a local copy of the stylesheets), and up-to-date versions of the perl, jing, trang, xmllint and xsltproc programs. If you do not have these installed then many of the make targets will not work. Fortunately, there is a target which will check to make sure you have these installed: make check. Some of the more important targets are listed below:

      Makefile Targets

    • Usage: make check

      This target checks to see whether you have perl, jing, trang, xmllint, and xsltproc installed.

    • Usage: make

      This is the default target and creates the TEI P5 schemas in RelaxNG & DTD and the HTML version of the Guidelines.

    • Usage: make convert

      This target creates the TEI P5 schemas in RelaxNG & DTD.

    • Usage: make dtds

      This target creates DTDs for TEI P5 in the DTD/ directory.

    • Usage: make schemas

      This target creates RelaxNG Schemas for TEI P5 in the Schema/ directory.

    • Usage: make html

      This target creates an HTML version of the TEI Guidelines in the Guidelines/ directory.

    • Usage: make xml

      This target creates a TEI Lite (P5) XML version of the Guidelines as Guidelines.xml in the current directory (i.e., P5/) as well as also making the exemplars listed further below.

    • Usage: make split

      This target creates a set of TEI P5 ODD files, with entities resolved, that are a version of the Guidelines split into chapters, in the split/ directory.

    • Usage: make clean

      This target removes most of the files created by the other targets.

    • Usage: make install

      This target installs a separate local copy of the DTDs, Schema, and HTML version of the guidelines under the file path given by the PREFIX variable (see , above) .

    • Usage: make exemplars

      This target uses Roma to create the DTDs and Schemas from a number of exemplary ODD files in the Exemplars directory. The exemplars target will create DTDs, XML Schemas, and both compact and xml versions of RelaxNG Schemas for the customizations based on the following ODD files:

    • TEI with maximal setup

      The full TEI setup with almost everything you could possibly want included.

    • TEI with corpus

      An example setup for basic copora using TEI or teiCorpus as the starting element.

    • TEI customization for dictionaries

      An experimental customization of the TEI for Dictionaries, this ODD includes a detailed example of the addition of an element.

    • TEI with drama

      An example setup which includes drama and linking modules.

    • TEI for TEI examples

      This ODD demonstrates the creation of egXML with the inclusion of MathML and RelaxNG as possibilities.

    • The TEI Lite customization

      This is the ODD for the popular example customization TEI Lite. It is entitled “Encoding for Interchange: an introduction to the TEI”.

    • TEI with minimal setup

      A very minimal TEI customization, with only the header, core, tei and textstructure modules. If you only want to use elements that appear in the core modules, then this is the customization for you!

    • TEI for manuscript description

      This example customization for manuscript description includes, in addition to the basic modules, those for names and dates, transcription, and manuscript description.

    • TEI with ODD elements

      This customization adds the ODD (One Document Does it all) tagset documentation module and changes the content of egXML.

    • TEI with OUCS setup

      This complex customization is given as an example of how the Oxford University Computing Services use the TEI for authoring its website. See http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ to see documents validated against schemas generated from this ODD.

    Roma: TEI-Conformant Validator (DTD, Relax NG or W3C Schema) Creator Development

    The Roma tool allows creation of TEI-Conformant Validators in the form of DTD, Relax NG or W3C Schemas. This can be used to customise the TEI Schema by adding, removing, renaming elements and/or attributes. This can also be used to generate specialised documentation for this customisation containing only the elements specified, or can be output in foreign languages if available. Roma uses TEI P5 and (in addition to its command-line version available in the Roma subversion module) there is also a web interface at http://www.tei-c.org/Roma/ which allows an easy form-filling method of generating the schemas and documentation. Roma uses the ODD format as its base and so any customisations can be saved in this form for later re-use or refinement.

    TEI XSL Stylesheets Package

    This package provides a location for the dissemination and development of XSLT stylesheets produced by the TEI. The TEI Wiki provides a location for stylesheets produced by others for TEI documents.

    The TEI XSL Stylesheets enable one to transform XML documents to HTML, to LaTeX, and to XSL Formatting Objects. The latter two of these are frequently used to transform TEI XML into PDF format. The XSL FO style sheets were developed for use with PassiveTeX (, a system using XSL formatting objects to render XML to PDF via LaTeX, and have also been tested with Render X and Antenna House implementations.

    Significantly more detailed information is available concerning the TEI XSL Stylesheets on the TEI website http://www.tei-c.org/Stylesheets/ and advice is available via the TEI-L mailing list.

    The Makefile provided with the TEI XSL Stylesheets has no default make target. The most usable two make targets are:

    • Installs the P4 and P5 xsl stylesheets in /usr or wherever you have set the ‘PREFIX’ variable at the beginning of the Makefile.
    • This creates a release subdirectory of both P4 and P5 sets of files.

    For the more technically interested, the stylesheets have internal documentation, using P&P Software’s XSLTdoc system; the results can be browsed in the technical documentation section of the TEI Stylesheets website.

    TEI Customisation of Emacs

    This package is a setup for the widely used open source GNU Emacs editor to provide a single all-singing all-dancing TEI Editing Environment. It uses NXML mode to provide continual incremental schema-based validation. The files included are Elisp packages; a Debian package is available for installation on Linux, where it will interact with existing TEI and Emacs setups. For MS-Windows a complete self-contained package of Emacs and all the TEI stylesheets and setup is available ().

    TEI OpenOffice (and similar) SaveAs TEI XML Filter Development Package

    This package brings together various filters for saving word-processing documents as TEI XML. There are currently filters to and from OpenOffice and TEI Lite, but there are plans for some filters for Microsoft Word. For more information on installation of the TEI – OpenOffice filters see

    Example: Installation of Stylesheets, P5, and Roma packages

    This is a step-by-step example of installation of the Stylesheets, P5, and Roma packages. This should give most people a working copy of the main TEI deliverables. These steps assume a linux system and command-line svn client, and installs everything in the “/tmp/tei/” directory. You should modify this to reflect where you want to put things on your particular system.

    • mkdir /tmp/tei ; cd /tmp/tei

    • svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk/Stylesheets ./Stylesheets

    • svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk/P5 ./P5

    • svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk/Roma ./Roma

    • cd Stylesheets ; make PREFIX=/tmp/tei install ; cd ..

    • cd Roma ; make PREFIX=/tmp/tei install ; cd ..

    • cd P5 ; make PREFIX=/tmp/tei XSL=/tmp/tei/share/xml/tei/stylesheet install ; cd ..

    • cd P5; make exemplars; cd ..

    This should provide you with a working TEI hierarchy in /tmp/tei/ (or whatever you changed that to on each command) with the TEI P5 Guidelines and Schemas, the TEI XSL Stylesheets, and a copy of Roma. It should also leave you a copy of the schemas for the most popular TEI customizations in P5/Exemplars/. More information on using these deliverables is available from the TEI website.

    Note: It is also possible to retrieve all of the modules from the TEI subversion repository with: svn co https://svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/tei/code/trunk ./TEI