THL Toolbox > Developers' Zone > THL Database Technologies and Models > Our Guide to TEI XML Markup > Text Markup - Overview
Text Markup - Overview
Contributor(s): Nathaniel Garson & David Germano
General Guidelines for Text Markup: Overview
This document presents the guidelines for the XML markup of text in the Tibetan and Himalayan Library. The first part contains a thematic presentation of tagging principles that discusses the different parts of an XML document (metadata and textual divisions) and various types of particular elements for marking up citations, links, images, etc. The second half of the document, XML Text Markup Detailed Manual, provides a list of all the elements used in the mark-up of THL essays and text. This is not necessarily all the elements available, as our DTD, called xtib2, is a derivative of the TEI DTD. (For TEI documentation go to 
TEI's on-line documentation.) Presently, the description here focuses primarily on English or non-Tibetan essays and works. However, over the course of time this will be expanded to include the markup of Tibetan texts as well.
While it is possible to markup any text document in XML using a simple text editor, it is advisable to use an XML editor, as these programs allow for one to validate the document against the DTD and thus insure that it is well-formed and properly marked up. The use of XML Editors, links to recommended editors, and customization packages are available from our XML Editors page. If you have not already installed an XML editor and set it up to work with the xtib2.dtd, please refer to that page. It will also tell you, how to create an initial XML document, either from scratch or using one of THL's conversion routines.