EpiDoc
Encyclopedia
The EpiDoc Collaborative, building recommendations for structured markup
of epigraphic
documents in TEI
XML
, was originally formed in 2000 by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
: Tom Elliott, the former director of the Ancient World Mapping Center, with Hugh Cayless and Amy Hawkins. The guidelines have matured considerably through extensive discussion on the Markup list and other discussion fora, at several conferences, and through the experience of various pilot projects. The first major—but not by any means the only—epigraphic project to adopt and pilot the EpiDoc recommendations has been the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias
, and the guidelines have reached a degree of stability for the first time during this process.
The EpiDoc schema
and guidelines may also be applied, perhaps with some local modification to related palaeolgraphical fields including Papyrology
(projects in progress), Sigillography
, and Numismatics
.
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...
of epigraphic
Epigraphy
Epigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
documents in TEI
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, was originally formed in 2000 by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
: Tom Elliott, the former director of the Ancient World Mapping Center, with Hugh Cayless and Amy Hawkins. The guidelines have matured considerably through extensive discussion on the Markup list and other discussion fora, at several conferences, and through the experience of various pilot projects. The first major—but not by any means the only—epigraphic project to adopt and pilot the EpiDoc recommendations has been the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias
Aphrodisias was a small city in Caria, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Its site is located near the modern village of Geyre, Turkey, about 230 km from İzmir....
, and the guidelines have reached a degree of stability for the first time during this process.
The EpiDoc schema
XML schema
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...
and guidelines may also be applied, perhaps with some local modification to related palaeolgraphical fields including Papyrology
Papyrology
Papyrology is the study of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., as preserved in manuscripts written on papyrus, the most common form of writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome...
(projects in progress), Sigillography
Sigillography
Sigillography is one of the auxiliary sciences of history. It refers to the study of seals attached to documents as a source of historical information. It concentrates on the legal and social meaning of seals, as well as the evolution of their design...
, and Numismatics
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
.
Guidelines
The EpiDoc Guidelines are available in two forms:- the stable guidelines, released periodically and available at: http://www.stoa.org/epidoc/gl/ (Current version 5)
- the source code, available in its most up-to-date form in the repository at SourceForge; the GL source files are a series of XML documents
Tools
Tool developed by and for the EpiDoc community include:- The EpiDoc webapp, available from the SourceForge repository (the same application is used to deliver the guidelines).
- The EpiDoc Crosswalker, a tool to transform data in both directions between EpiDoc and other encoding schemes, markup schemas, and databases. (In progress.)
- CHET-C (the Chapel Hill Electronic Text-Converter), an application originally written in VBA, then as a free-standing JavaJava (programming language)Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
app, and now available as a self-contained JavascriptJavaScriptJavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
platform written by Hugh Cayless. http://www.stoa.org/projects/epidoc/stable/chetc-js/chetc.html (A PythonPython (programming language)Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
and XSLTXSLTXSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...
version of CHET-C is under construction as part of the IDP project.) - Transcoder: a Java tool for converting between Beta Code, Unicode NF C, Unicode NF D, and GreekKeys encoding for Greek script on the fly (download link to follow).
Projects
- Concordia, King's College LondonKing's College LondonKing's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
and New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan... - Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, King's College LondonKing's College LondonKing's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, UK - Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica, KCLKing's College LondonKing's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
- Integrating Digital Papyrology (Duke UniversityDuke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Heidelberg University, King's College LondonKing's College LondonKing's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, University of KentuckyUniversity of KentuckyThe University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
), see now http://papyri.info/ - US Epigraphy Project, Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Providence RI, USA - Vindolanda Tablets Online, Oxford University, UK
- Etruscan Texts Project, University of Massachusetts AmherstUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstThe University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
, Amherst MA, USA
See also
- Leiden ConventionsLeiden ConventionsThe Leiden Conventions are an established set of rules, symbols, and brackets used to indicate the condition of an epigraphic or papyrological text in a modern edition...
- EpigraphyEpigraphyEpigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
- Text Encoding InitiativeText Encoding InitiativeThe Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
- Digital ClassicistDigital ClassicistThe Digital Classicist is a project and community for those interested in the application of Humanities Computing to the field of Classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the...