Annotation and indexing
In a digital edition, annotation can be provided in several ways and at several levels. The most simple form of annotation are notes anchored to a location in the text. It is also possible to hyperlink certain stretches of text (e.g. those that refer to persons or other named entitites to external information, created by the project or elsewhere. Annotation can also be provided at a higher level, for instance about a chapter or a letter in a collection. Most projects will also have some level of annotation at the level of the entire work or collection being edited, for instance about its publication history or its literary context.
Often, it will be desirable to create annotations of multiple types, e.g. in order to filter the display of annotations by type. This can occur at the levels of annotation.
Indexing is related to annotation in that it can be used to link stretches of text to an index term, often provided with explanations.
Local annotations
Local annotations are annotations anchored to a location in the test. We assume here that a point in the text is sufficient and that there is no need to mark a stretch of text as the target of annotation (but see Indexing, below).
A digital edition in TEI provides the ability to encode each peculiarity within the text (source) in detail in the TEI file. It is, however, possible to – for example to achieve a faster result – deal with phenomena the traditional way by discussing them in an annotation, using the <note> element.
An empty <anchor/> element must be placed within the transcription, the element containing a @n attribute with a short keyword and a @type=”note”. Nest another <note> element with @n attribute in the <div type="notes" n="keyword" xml:lang="language"> element containing the text of the annotation. The @n must have the same value in both elements. All annotations within the same language must be incorporated within the same <div> element, and the notes should be arranged based on their location in the text. For example:
<p>This is an exemple<anchor n=“nootje” type= “note”/> of how to create a note</p> <div type=“notes” xml:lang=“en”> <note n=“nootje”>This is the note</note> … other notes in English… </div> <div type=“notes” xml:lang=“nl”> <note n=“nootje”>Dit is de noot</note> … other notes in Dutch … </div>
