= High level requirements for DE Specs = == general principles == * must specifiy standard file encoding and unambiguous conventions for entry of non-ASCII characters * a convention is needed for DE personnel to indicate and record unknown characters * character entry conventions must be ergonomic and within capabilities of DE firm * DE output must be plain text, but will not be well-formed XML * DE markup should be concise and unambiguous * DE markup should facilitate conversion to target structured XML document == required structural features == * conventions are needed for standard line, paragraph, and page-level structure * markup needs to indicate not only where a feature starts, but also where it ends, unless automatic inference of the end location is trivial * must address headers/footers, notes (marginal, foot- and end-), tables, and lists, and figures * must support multi-column layouts * must indicate relation of text to commentary, where these are presented on the page together * must indicate emphasis (e.g. italics) * must indicate change of typestyle, where this is semantically significant * conventions for abbreviations == expository aspects == * conventions should be indicated in numbered sections * language needs to be kept simple and readable for Chinese employees * complex structural features should be illustrated with an example (or examples) from actual texts and desired transcription == coverage == * DE is not appropriate where OCR would be more cost-effective * material needed by the Institute's scientists in the proximate future should be accommodated * version targets * DE Specs 1.0 should cover printed European books up to the nineteenth century * DE Specs 1.1 should add support for Chinese books * DE Specs 2.0 should cover also transcriptions made by students or other personnel of annotated matter or manuscripts * out of scope for DE Specs 1.0-2.0 * specialized document types such as dictionaries * dramatic and verse literature * complex formal language content (e.g. mathematics, chemical formulae, musical notation) * documents such as notebooks, personal letters, and financial documents * twentieth-century material (perhaps with certain exceptions)