TEIrich

TEIrich is a term that emerged from discussions within the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) community. It refers to a proposed set of recommendations or best practices for encoding specific types of texts that are not fully or optimally addressed by the current TEI guidelines. The name itself is a portmanteau of "TEI" and "rich," suggesting a desire for more detailed, nuanced, or specialized encoding.

The impetus behind TEIrich often stems from the practical challenges faced by scholars working with particular genres, languages, or historical periods. For instance, encoding complex manuscript features, specific linguistic phenomena, or particular forms of digital scholarship might require extensions or interpretations of existing TEI elements that are not universally agreed upon. TEIrich, therefore, represents an attempt to consolidate and standardize such emergent practices.

Discussions around TEIrich typically occur on TEI mailing lists, at TEI conferences, or through collaborative projects. The goal is to foster a consensus that can eventually be incorporated into future revisions of the official TEI Guidelines or maintained as supplementary recommended practices. It reflects the ongoing evolution of digital humanities and the need for TEI to remain a flexible and powerful tool for representing a wide range of textual materials.