TEI XPointer Schemes - Implementation and Example Application
Authors: Lück, Christian / Hiepel, Ludger / Schnocks, Johannes
Date: Friday, 8 September 2023, 11:15am to 12:45pm
Location: Main Campus, L 2.202 <campus:measure>
Abstract
The XPointer framework is one of those W3C notions that are dead today. So are the TEI XPointer schemes. The reasons are manifold. Most notably, there has never been a full-grown implementation of an XPointer processor. Furthermore, it is unclear, what a processor is to do with the pointers, that actually only point to a portion of a resource. XPointers have thus never grown to their paradigmatic field of application, in which they could have proven their value. Specified in the SATS section of the guidelines, TEI XPointer schemes occur at several other sections, among them dead-by-design SASO. This bad company appears to be symptomatic.
However, there is a paradigmatic field of application for the TEI XPointer schemes: the Web-Annotations-like <annotation> element and its @target attribute. If this element is really meant to “represent an annotation following the Web Annotation Data Model” like the TEI reference states, then we need a referencing mechanism, that is compatible with the Web Annotation’s selector mechanism, and that at a specification level. The TEI XPointer schemes not only do satisfy this requirement but are the only specified component of the TEI, that satisfies it.
This short paper first introduces a full implementation of the TEI XPointer schemes: an ANTLR-based XPointer parser, a Saxon-based processor, and its APIs.1 The processor has a Java API and an XPath API. This enables the evaluation of XPointers in XSLT and XQuery through XPath function extensions, e.g., xptr:get-sequence(...) for getting the sequence of items pointed to, or xptr:type(...) to get the pointer’s type. There are also conversion functions for translating TEI XPointers to Web Annotation Selector schemes and vice versa.
The paper then showcases the application of TEI XPointers in annotation/@target in a project from the field of Old Testament research. Here, portions of Masoretes’ book of Ijob are annotated and related to translations in Septuagint and Targum, in order to examine semantic deferrals in the textual traditions. This is a specific application in the more general domain of inquiries on intertextuality. A TEI-based approach proves its value, when there’s a mix of stable texts and texts still under editing––provided that the data model will allow straightforward transformation to linked open data. The TEI XPointers schemes serve as a surety.
Bibliography
Grosso, P. et al. (2003). XPointer Framework. W3C Recommendation 25 March 2003. https://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-framework/
TEI. (2023). P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. Version 4.6.0. Last updated on 4th April 2023, revision f18deffba. https://tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/index.html
Sanderson, R. et al. (2017). Web Annotation Vocabulary W3C Recommendation 23 February 2017. https://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-vocab/
Cayless, H. (2013). Rebooting TEI Pointers. In: Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative. Issue 6, 2013. doi 10.4000/jtei.907
About the authors
Ludger Hiepel is a research assistent at the “Department of Scriptural Exegesis and Theology”, University of Münster, Germany.
Christian Lück is a research software engineer at “Service Center for Digital Humanities”, University of Münster, Germany.
Johannes Schnocks is a full professor at the “Department of Scriptural Exegesis and Theology” University of Münster, Germany.
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