The TEI Processing Model. Introduction, limitations and potential extensions

The TEI Processing Model (PM) is a TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) facility that can be used to give a declarative description of the expected behaviour associated with TEI XML elements. The paper will introduce the model and its implementation in TEI Publisher. It will go on to discuss a number of real-life edition requirements that the current model cannot handle. It will propose extensions to the model to deal with those requirements. Among these are: (i) being able to associate multiple behaviours with an element, such as in the case of a page break rendered as an image that is also a link (which could be handled by nesting associated behaviours); (ii) being able to generate new content, such as headers (could also be handled by nesting); (iii) sorting of output (which would require a new parameter); and (iv) more modularity in the PM (which could be handled by facilitating switching to another set of PM definitions). The paper will also argue that it is conceptually and practically not a good idea to define the PM as part of the schema specification and propose an alternative. The common aim of these proposals is to diminish the need for procedural coding in the creation of editions.