Facsimile

Modern editions are expected to contain a complete facsimile of the edited sources. In the TEI document, information about the images of the source go into the <facsimile> element. The facsimile element contains surfaces, corresponding with sheets (sometimes openings), and possibly zones, corresponding with areas on those sheets. Zones can be used for pages (for instance, a folded sheet may contain 4 zones corresponding to the pages written on the sheet) or other areas that are of special interest (e.g. a sketch).

Zones are defined using a coordinate system starting in the top left corner of the surface. We use millimeters (rather than pixels) to define the zones, in order to be independent of the resolution of the image.

For example (assuming the surface is a folded A4 sheet, to be divided into two zones:

<facsimile>
 <graphic url="1r.jpg"/>
 <surface n="1r" xml:id="s1r" ulx="0" uly="0" lrx="297" lry="210">
  <zone xml:id="z1r-1"  ulx="148.5" uly="0" lrx="297" lry="210"></zone>
  <zone xml:id="z1r-4"  ulx="0" uly="0" lrx="148.5" lry="210"></zone>
 </surface>
  ....
</facsimile>

The surfaces and zones must have xml:id attributes, as we need to link them to the text that they contain. This is described under page breaks. The order of the surfaces corresponds to the (most probable) physical ordering of the document.