W. & T. Ott: TXSTEP – an integrated XML-based scripting language for scholarly text data processing

Wilhelm Ott (University of Tuebingen) and Tobias Ott (pagina publication technologies ltd.)

With TXSTEP, we present and put up to discussion a preliminary version of a new, powerful XML-based tool for scholarly research in the text-based humanities. Its architecture is based on more than 40 years of experience in supporting humanities projects at the University of Tübingen and beyond.

The purpose of TXSTEP is not to provide another toolbox containing ready-made solutions for pre-defined problems. Of course, tools like these are adequate for many purposes; but we see no urgency to add a further one to the existing packages of this kind.

In fact, TXSTEP has been designed as a high performing scripting environment for the serious humanities scholar and other professionals in text data processing who face problems not easily solvable by XSLT or other means. TXSTEP gives them complete control over every detail of the data processing part of their projects.

TXSTEPs architecture is based on the Tübingen System of Text Processing tools, TUSTEP, whose current version is the result of more than 40 years of experience in supporting humanities projects at the University of Tübingen and beyond.

The proposed paper will include a short demo of TXSTEPs functionality, showing solutions also for tasks which can not easily be performed by existing XML tools.

http://www.xmlprague.cz/sessions2015/#txstep