< >

Manuscript Description as Text

• “Document-centric”
• Model: TEI MMSS (TEI Medieval Manuscripts Description Work Group)
• Paragraphs of prose, with some lists
• “Tag soup”
  • Shallow nesting structure
  • In-line “access points”
  • Information in PCDATA content or CDATA attribute values
  • Almost any information may occur almost anywhere
  • Information that belongs together logically may be separated structurally
• Digitizing existing prose descriptions (curatorial)
• Except for in-line elements that refer explicitly to manuscript description, no different than any plain prose document (paragraphs and lists)
• In-line elements could, alternatively, be managed with <seg type="…"> elements
• Minimal analytical capability