Phase 1: Input of Daozang jiyao Extra-canonical Texts

Texts which are not found in the Daoist Canon of the Ming (Zhengtong Daozang, 1445) and are mostly the product of late Daoist movements are input first. They constitute indispensable sources for discerning the character, development, and visions of Daoism during the late imperial period. The number of such extra-canonical texts is about 100. The texts are input, proofread in several passes, and formatted with structural markup tags by a specialized team under the guidance of Dr. Christian Wittern. Texts of which electronic versions (in simplified or full-form Chinese character encoding) already exist will be used for improving the quality of the input texts through text comparison algorithms developed by Dr. Wittern and his team during their work on the electronic Chinese Buddhist Canon (CBETA). Dr. Wittern and his team will then proceed to encode the digital texts following the guidelines of the international Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). This encoding will be in Unicode and XML-based in order to ensure compatibility, longevity, and portability across all platforms.

Three Phases

Phase 2: Development of New Methodologies