La TEI e la rappresentazione del testo: alcune riflessioni critiche

This paper addresses some of the structural and conceptual limitations of XML/TEI encoding in the context of Digital Scholarly Editions. While the TEI schemas offers editors considerable flexibility in representing complex textual phenomena, this same flexibility often results in highly divergent encoding practices and limited interoperability across projects. One of the most critical issues is the rigid hierarchical model of XML, which cannot natively represent overlapping structures, but also the need for downstream tools to consistently interpret heterogeneous markup consistently. The case of marginalia, paradigmatic of paratexts that are semantically rich but structurally peripheral, is examined to illustrate the practical consequences of these challenges. The paper also reflects on how encoding decisions impact visualization strategies and discusses the importance of designing adaptable tools capable of responding to evolving standards and technologies.