ODD

ODD stands for "One Document Does it all". It is a TEI XML-conformant specification format that allows one to customize TEI P5 in a literate programming fashion. It uses elements from the new "Tag Documentation" module.

Description

The TEI Guidelines, its DTD, and its schema fragments, are all produced from a single XML resource containing:

1. Descriptive prose (lots of it)
2. Examples of usage (plenty)
3. Formal declarations for components of the TEI Abstract Model:
   1. elements and attributes
   2. modules
   3. classes and macros
4. We call this resource an ODD (One Document Does it all) although the master source is instantiated as a gazillion XML mini-documents.

Example

The TEI scheme can only be used by customizing it. Customizations are also expressed in the ODD language. For example:

<schemaSpec ident="myTEIlite">
<desc>This is TEI Lite with simplified heads</desc>
  <moduleRef name="teistructure"/>
  <moduleRef name="linking"/>
  <moduleRef name="core"/>
  <moduleRef name="teiheader"/>
  <elementSpec ident="head" mode="change">
    <content><rng:text/></content>
  </elementSpec>
</schemaSpec>

produces the schema for TEI Lite, with a slight change.

See also

• A talk about the ODD system, given on 13 Feb 2007 by Lou Burnard and Sebastian Rahtz at the OUCS Encoding Digital Texts workshop
• A draft of a P5 ODD HowTo, by Lou Burnard
• A PowerPoint presentation on TEI/ODD by Laurent Romary; OUCS, September 2006