Fw: TEI for Buddhist Text Database??

[Dominik Wujastyk]

This message from Christian Wittern was originally to the Text Encoding
Initiative group, but I thought it might be of interest here in
INDOLOGY.  I forward it with Christian's permission:

------------------------------
From: christian wittern <g53150 at SAKURA.KUDPC.KYOTO-U.AC.JP>
Tue, 20 Jul 1993 19:22:11 CDT
To: Multiple recipients of list TEI-L <TEI-L at UICVM.EARN>
Subject: TEI for Buddhist Text Database??



Hello,

At the shaping stages for a large text database project, which eventually
might include the whole Buddhist Canon in Chinese in several hundred
volumes, I'm trying to establish if the TEI-Guidelines are applyable
for our project and need some advice.
1. After scanning through some megabytes of DOC's, DTD's and Drafts I
   got the impression, that coding the text in Chinese Characters would
   require the proper writing system declaration and character set
   declaration somewhere in the beginning. Does this mean, that all the
   rest, i.e. the tags etc. will also be in this writing system (that
   is, in double-byte characters)? Is there any software, which can
   handle this?
2. For some texts, we want to incorporate a translation in the e-text.
   Are there some special taus available for doing so, or do we have
   to use the usual pointer-references?
3. Apparently the part of the P2 draft, which deals with critical editions
   is not yet released. What approach is recommended in the meantime to
   code such texts?
4. Are there any complete examples of TEI conformant coded texts, which
   could be studied for reference.
 
Any help would be appreciated,
 
Christian Wittern,
 
Kyoto
 
International Research Institute for Zen-Buddhism,
Hanazono College
--
Dominik Wujastyk           Phone (and voice messages): +44 71 611 8467