Encoding Dictionaries

: This article describes the major problems in devising a TEI encoding format for dictionaries, which, because of their high degree of structuring and compression of information, are among the most complex text types treated in the TEI. The major problems for this task were (1) the tension between generality of the description, in order to be widely applicable across dictionaries, and descriptive power, that is, the ability to precisely describe the particular structure of any given dictionary; and (2) the need to accommodate different views and uses of the encoded dictionary, for example, as printed object and as a database of information. Key Words: encoding, TEI, dictionaries, SGML. _______________________________ Nancy Ide is Associate Professor and chair of Computer Science at Vassar College, and Visiting Researcher at CNRS. She is president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and chair of the Steering Committee of the Text Encoding Initiative. Jean Vronis is Ma..