Multi-Dimensional Texts in a One-Dimensional Medium

Abstract

The paper discusses one of the tools which may be used for representing texts in machine-readable form, i.e. encoding systems or markup languages. This discussion is at the same time a report on current tendencies in the field. An attempt is made at reconstructing some of the main conceptions of text lying behind these tendencies. It is argued that although the conceptions of texts and text structures inherent in these tendencies seem to be misguided, nevertheless text encoding is a fruitful approach to the study of texts. Finally, some conclusions are drawn concerning the relevance of this discussion to themes in text linguistics.