The 'application/tei+xml' mediatype
draft-lundberg-app-tei-xml-06

Abstract

This document defines the 'application/tei+xml' media type for markup languages defined in accordance with the Text Encoding and Interchange guidelines

Status of this Memo

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Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Recognizing TEI files
3.  Fragment identifier
4.  Security considerations
    4.1.  Harmful content
    4.2.  Intellectual Property Rights
    4.3.  Authenticity and confidentiality
5.  IANA Considerations
    5.1.  Registration of MIME type 'application/tei+xml'
6.  References
    6.1.  Normative References
    6.2.  Informative References
§  Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

Text Encoding and Interchange (TEI) is an international and interdisciplinary standard that is widely used by libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to represent all kinds of textual material for online research and teaching.[TEI] (, “TEI Guidelines,” .)

This document defines the 'application/tei+xml' media type in accordance with [RFC3023] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.) in order enable generic XML processing of TEI documents on the Internet.

2.  Recognizing TEI files

TEI files are XML documents or fragments having the root element in a TEI namespace. TEI namespace URIs start with http://www.tei-c.org/ns/ followed by the version number of the namespace. The current namespace is http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0

In general, a [TEI] (, “TEI Guidelines,” .) file usually contains either of the strings

<TEI

<teiCorpus

near the beginning, and usually after an XML declaration on the first line, i.e., a string like "<?xml ... ?>".

The teiCorpus documents give the possibility to bundle multiple documents into a single file.

Examples:

A document beginning with <TEI

	    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
	    <TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
	    <teiHeader>
	    ...
	    </teiHeader>
	    <text>
	    ...
	    </text>
	    </TEI>

A document beginning with <teiCorpus

	    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
	    <teiCorpus  xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
	    <teiHeader>
	    ...
	    </teiHeader>
	    <TEI>
	    <teiHeader>
	    ...
	    </teiHeader>
	    <text>
	    ...
	    </text>
	    </TEI>
	    <TEI>
	    ... second document ...
	    </TEI>
	    <TEI>
	    ... third document  ...
	    </TEI>
	    </teiCorpus>

TEI and teiCorpus files are often given the extensions .tei and .teiCorpus, respectively. There is a third type of file, which often is given the suffix .odd. ODD (‘One Document Does it All’) is a TEI XML document which include schema fragments, prose documentation, and reference documentation. It is used for the definition and documentation of XML based languages, and primarily for the TEI Guidelines.[ODD] (, “Getting Started with P5 ODDs,” .) In other words, ODD files does not differ from other TEI file in syntax, only in function.

3.  Fragment identifier

Documents having the media type 'application/tei+xml', use the fragment identifier notation as specified in [RFC3023] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.) for the media type 'application/xml'.

4.  Security considerations

An XML resource does not in itself compromise data security. When being available on a network simply through the dereferencing of an IRI [RFC3987] (Duerst, M. and M. Suignard, “Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs),” January 2005.) or a URI, care must be taken to properly interpret the data to prevent unintended access. Hence the security issues of [RFC3986] (Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, “Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax,” January 2005.), section 7, apply. In addition, as this media type uses the "+xml" convention, it shares the same security considerations as described in RFC 3023 [RFC3023] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.), section 10.

4.1.  Harmful content

Any application accepting submitted or retrieving TEI XML for processing has to be aware of risks connected with injection of harmful scripts and executable XML. Even common XML inclusion or the use of external entities, could potentially be used to reveal aspects of a service that may compromise its security. Any vulnerability of these kinds are, however, application specific. The TEI namespaces do not contain such elements.

4.2.  Intellectual Property Rights

TEI documents often arise in digitization of cultural heritage materials. Texts made accessible in TEI format may be unrestricted in the sense that there are no restrictions to their distribution through Digital Rights Management[DRM] (, “Digital rights management,” .) or Intellectual Property Rights[IPR] (, “Intellectual property,” .) constraints. TEI documents are heterogeneous objects. Some parts of a document may be unrestricted, whereas other parts, such as editorial text and annotations may be written much later may hence be subject to DRM restrictions.

The TEI format provides means for highly granular attribution, down to the content of individual XML elements. Software agents participating in the exchange or processing TEI must honour markup of this kind. Even when there are no IPR constraints, intellectual property attribution alone requires that document users are able to tell the difference between content from different sources.

4.3.  Authenticity and confidentiality

Historical archival records are often encoded in TEI and legal document may be binding centuries after they were written. Digitization and encoding of legal texts may require technologies for assuring authenticity, such as cryptographic check sums and electronic signatures.

Similarly, historical documents may in part or in their entirety be confidential. This may be required by law or by the terms and conditions such as in the case of donated or deposited text from private sources. A text archive may need content filtering or cryptographic technologies to meet such requirements.

5.  IANA Considerations

5.1.  Registration of MIME type 'application/tei+xml'

MIME media type name: application

MIME subtype name: tei+xml

Required parameters: None

Optional parameters: charset

the parameter has identical semantics to the charset parameter of the "application/xml" media type as specified in RFC 3023 [RFC3023] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.).

Encoding considerations:

Identical to those for 'application/xml'. See RFC 3023 [RFC3023] (Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, “XML Media Types,” January 2001.), Section 3.2.

Security considerations:

See Security considerations (Security considerations) in this specification.

Interoperability considerations:

TEI documents are often given the extension '.xml', which is not uncommon for other XML document formats.

Published specification:

This media type registration is for TEI documents[TEI] (, “TEI Guidelines,” .) as described in this document.

Applications which use this media type:

There are currently no known applications using the media type 'application/tei+xml'.

Additional information:

Magic number(s):

There is no single initial octet sequence that is always present in TEI documents.

file extension(s):

Common extensions are '.tei', '.teiCorpus' and '.odd'. See Recognizing TEI files (Recognizing TEI files) in this specification.

Macintosh File Type Code(s)

TEXT

Object Identifier(s) or OID(s)

Not applicable

6.  References

6.1. Normative References

6.2. Informative References

Authors' Addresses