Alex Catalogue Lite
This is a "lite" version of the Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts. It includes only a small sample of texts from the complete Catalogue, and its purpose is to demonstrate how TEI/XML files can be saved and then transformed into other formats.
Use the menu to the left to browse by author or title. Select individual titles to display them on the screen. You will then have the option of viewing the texts in a number of formats:
- plain HTML - the text marked up and displayed with no navigation features. This version is good for printing, but more importantly, this version should be easily accessible by people with disabilities.
- "smart" HTML - the text marked up with navigation features. This is the default. It should print nicely as well.
- PDF - the text converted into Portable Document Format. This version is specifically designed for printing. The printed version will have a title page, a table of contents, numbered pages, and chapters should always begin on the right-hand page. Print and bind this version to create a book.
- TEI/XML - the text in its raw Text Encoding Initiative format. Use this version to examine the structural features of each document.
About creating TEI/XML documents
Creating one or two TEI documents is not really very difficult. All you need is a plain text editor and a relatively modern Web browser. Creating large sets of TEI documents can be challenging. The tedium of editing XML becomes quickly apparent.
For this reason many institutions who want to maintain sets of TEI files often create some sort of computer system to assist in the process. For me, I created a set of object-orieted Perl modules doing input/output against a relational database. I then wrote a number of Perl scripts using the modules to do the actual work. For example, I have one set of scripts used to do data-entry, and I have another set of scripts that "build" my TEI files by assembling specific records from the underlying database. This part of the system is more like a publishing program; it is in no way an editing program. I still do a lot of that by hand.
The magic happens when the TEI files are transformed into other formats. This transformation process happens through a technology called XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations). By combining an XSLT stylesheet with an XML (TEI) file, an XSLT processor will create a new file based on the content of the XML. To create PDF documents you must go one step further and use the newly created file as input against a Formatting Objects (FO) processor, but that is probably more than you need to know right now.
If you want to get started doing some of these transformations, then you are encouraged to explore the use of a number of XSLT files included in this distribution. They include:- tei2htm.xsl - this XSLT file is used to create the plain HTML versions of the texts.
- tei2html.xsl - this file is used to create the "smart" HTML versions of the texts.
- tei2fo.xsl - this file is use to create a FO file, and the FO file was used as input for a program called fop which converts the FO file into a PDF file.
XML is a very interesting technology. I compare it in a positive way to alchemy, but instead of turning lead into gold, XML allows you to turn data into information. TEI is a particular flavor of XML and provides many opportunities for all sorts of people who want to distribute sets of narrative texts.
Enjoy, thank you for using the Alex Catalogue Lite, and if you have any questions, then don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Eric Lease Morgan, Librarian