From MS Word, Transkribus & Co. to
TEI Encoded Text

Lecture Session 6

Oslo Summer School
2025

Annika Rockenberger, PhD

XML TEI and
How to Get There

1. Hard Coding

Pros

  • Quickly learn and use TEI Guidelines and Unicode codes
  • Familiarise oneself with plain text editors
  • Getting used to "reading" code

Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • Slow, time-consuming process

  • Doesn't work well for long documents

  • GUI fatigue

XML TEI and
How to Get There

2. MS Word et al.

Pros

  • Readily accessible (!)
  • Familiarity with GUI and markup
  • Encoding task easier to delegate           

Cons

  • TEI Guidelines and encoding remain obscure
  • WYSIWYG sloppiness

  • Doesn't work well for long documents (but for different reasons)

  • [Proprietary format, expensive license]

XML TEI and
How to Get There

https://teigarage.tei-c.org/#

XML TEI and
How to Get There

https://www.transkribus.org/

XML TEI and
How to Get There

3. Transkribus

Pros

  • Readily accessible (!)
  • User-friendly GUI and intuitive markup
  • Encoding task easier to delegate           

Cons

  • TEI Guidelines and encoding remain obscure
  • Page unit vs. layout/semantic unit
  • In "the cloud", not on a local server

  • Only with a subscription or membership, can be expensive

  • One code-maintainer

https://help.transkribus.org/downloading

Try it Out!

Take a small MS Word file (or Markdown, Open Office, LaTeX...) and convert it into a TEI XML file using the TEIGarage:

https://teigarage.tei-c.org/#
 

ATTENTION: Large documents take a lot of time, and the server might time out!

Go to https://github.com/TEIC/TEIGarage and read the About section. You can also look at some recent presentations about TEIGarage.

OR

Go to https://zde-uzh.github.io./proto4diged-handbook/en/2_Editionsarbeit/04_converting/ and read the documentation for the Transkribus export.
 

Discuss with your neighbour the pros and cons of using a converter like TEIGarage or an export from Transkribus for your project.

1.

2.

Contact

baerut-admin@ub.uio.no

 

annika.rockenberger@ub.uio.no

From MS Word, Transkribus & Co. to TEI Encoded Text

By Annika Rockenberger

From MS Word, Transkribus & Co. to TEI Encoded Text

Slides for the Lecture Session "From MS Word, Transkribus & Co. to TEI Encoded Text" of the Oslo Summer School on Digital Scholarly Editions. Oslo, 2025-09-22 to 2025-09-26. Design: Sofie Gilbert. Content: Annika Rockenberger. CC-BY 4.0

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