FairCopy: A Word Processor for the Digital Humanities
Item
-
Title
-
FairCopy: A Word Processor for the Digital Humanities
-
Description
-
A digital demonstration presented at the DHSI 2021 – Online Edition Conference & Colloquium
-
Creator
-
Nick Laiacona
-
Date
-
2021
-
Format
-
MP4, txt
-
Rights Holder
-
Nick Laiacona
-
Abstract
-
FairCopy is a specialized word processor for studying manuscripts and historical texts. It gives scholars a desktop editing environment to create TEI encoded texts without writing XML code. In this recorded presentation, we will demonstrate the features and functionality of this software.
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is an international consortium that publishes a set of guidelines for encoding digital representations of textual primary sources. In 2017, it was awarded the Antonio Zampolli Prize from the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, reflecting its impact over the last 30 years on the digital humanities. The TEI Guidelines have been used by hundreds of scholarly projects and are an essential tool for researching, preserving, and disseminating cultural heritage world-wide.
And yet, despite its mission to provide a common vocabulary for describing texts, TEI faces problems of adoption and use in the wider scholarly community. While the basics of TEI XML encoding are simple enough, true fluency in TEI requires institutional support and commitment in the form of training, technical staff, IT infrastructure, and the time and commitment of the individual scholar. Many critical editing projects choose not to use TEI's guidelines because of these barriers.
FairCopy intervenes as a solution focused on the needs of the individual scholar and their students. It provides a complete user interface layer over the TEI Simple schema. Scholars can seamlessly import and export TEI XML documents. They can also bring in IIIF images of primary resources and link them to their transcriptions. User data remains on the user's computer. The software can work offline.
FairCopy is desktop software for Mac, PC, and Linux. We plan to offer it in English, Spanish, and French. FairCopy is in early access and is available for free at www.faircopyeditor.com. FairCopy will be available commercially in Fall 2021.
-
Type
-
Digital Demonstration
