© 1999 by Association for Literary & Linguistic Computing
Concurrent document hierarchies in MECS and SGML
The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, Norway Z Corresponding author at: Computer Center (M/C 135), University of Illinois at Chicago, 1940 W Taylor St, Room 124, Chicago, IL 60612-72352, USA. E-mail: cmsmcq@acm.org
Applications of computers to humanistic research rely increasingly on SGML or XML markup; it is a persistent challenge to find suitable representations in these tree-based formalisms, for the overlap of textual features. SGML lends itself to a straightforward data model with a simple relationship between markup (element and attributes) and features or structures in the text. Barnard et al. (Computers and the Humanities, 22: 265-76, 1988; 29: 21131, 1995) and TEI (Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange, 1994) have presented methods for registering the existence of overlap using SGML notations, but these methods are often felt to be unsatisfactory, in part (we argue) because they complicate the otherwise straightforward SGML data model. The MECS and CONCUR notations described here allow the straightforward markup of overlapping textual features. CONCUR further allows the formulation of useful document grammars for concurrent hierarchies of textual features. The theoretical and practical advantages outweigh the practical disadvantages, and the humanities computing community should begin serious experimentation with CONCUR.