RFC 6129

The 'application/tei+xml' Media Type

📅 published February 2011, from ietf

RFC 6129: The 'application/tei+xml' Media Type 💖

Okay bestie, this is RFC 6129 🎀, and it's giving TEI files get their own media type ✨. The authors are L. Romary (TEI Consortium and INRIA) 🌸 and S. Lundberg (The Royal Library, Copenhagen) 🧚. It's published in February 2011, the category is Informational (so it's for info, not a standards-track spec), and the ISSN is 2070-1721. The title block doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so it's just vibing on its own 💅.

Abstract

This doc defines the application/tei+xml media type for markup languages that follow the Text Encoding and Interchange guidelines 📚.

Status of This Memo

This one is not an Internet Standards Track spec. It's published for informational purposes 🦋.

It's a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and represents the consensus of the IETF community 🫶. It got public review and was approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not every doc the IESG approves is a candidate for any level of Internet Standard, so check Section 2 of RFC 5741 if you're curious 🙈.

For the latest status, errata, and how to send feedback, go to http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6129 💜.

Copyright Notice

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the publication date. Please read these carefully, because they spell out your rights and restrictions for this doc, no cap 🙏. Code Components pulled out of this document must include the Simplified BSD License text described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come without warranty, as the Simplified BSD License describes 💅.

1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.  Recognizing TEI Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3.  Fragment Identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
  4.1.  Harmful Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
  4.2.  Intellectual Property Rights  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
  4.3.  Authenticity and confidentiality  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  5.1.  Registration of MIME Type 'application/tei+xml' . . . . . . 5
6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
  6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
  6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1. Introduction ✨

Text Encoding and Interchange (TEI) is an international, interdisciplinary standard 🌈. Libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars use it all the time to represent every kind of textual material for online research and teaching 📖 [TEI].

This document defines the application/tei+xml media type under [RFC3023] 💖. The goal is to make generic processing of these documents possible on the Internet, using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) [W3C.REC-xml-20081126] technologies 🧚.

2. Recognizing TEI Files 🔍

Okay so, TEI files are XML documents or fragments whose root element (as defined in [W3C.REC-xml-20081126]) sits in a TEI namespace 💅. TEI namespace names are defined as a Universal Resource Identifier (URI) [RFC3986], following [W3C.REC-xml-names-20091208]. They start with http://www.tei-c.org/ns/ and then the version number of the namespace. The current namespace is http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0 🎀.

The most common root element names for TEI documents are:

<TEI>
<teiCorpus>

The teiCorpus root is the one that lets you bundle multiple documents into a single file 🍓.

Here are some examples. First, a document with a <TEI> root element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
   <teiHeader>
   ...
   </teiHeader>
   <text>
   ...
   </text>
</TEI>

And a document with a <teiCorpus> root element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<teiCorpus xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
   <teiHeader>
   ...
   </teiHeader>
   <TEI>
      <teiHeader>
      ...
      </teiHeader>
      <text>
      ...
      </text>
   </TEI>
   <TEI>
   ... second document ...
   </TEI>
   <TEI>
   ... third document  ...
   </TEI>
</teiCorpus>

TEI and teiCorpus files are often given the extensions .tei and .teiCorpus, respectively 🦋. There's also a third kind of file, often with the suffix .odd. ODD ("One Document Does it All") is a TEI XML document that bundles schema fragments, prose documentation, and reference documentation 🧠. It's used to define and document XML-based languages, mainly the TEI Guidelines [ODD]. In other words, ODD files don't differ from other TEI files in syntax, only in function 💜.

3. Fragment Identifier 🧩

Documents with the application/tei+xml media type use the fragment identifier notation specified in [RFC3023] for the application/xml media type ✨.

4. Security Considerations 🔐

Okay, this part is serious, bestie 😭. An XML resource doesn't compromise data security all by itself 💅. But once it's available on a network just by dereferencing an Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) [RFC3987] or a URI, you have to be careful to interpret the data properly so nobody gets access they shouldn't 🚨. That's why the security issues of [RFC3986], Section 7, apply here.

Also, since this media type uses the "+xml" convention, it shares the same security considerations described in RFC 3023 [RFC3023], Section 10 🧚. In general, security issues around using XML in IETF protocols are covered in RFC 3470 [RFC3470], Section 7. We won't copy all of that here, but we'll go over a few things that matter for document-centric XML used for text encoding 🌸.

4.1. Harmful Content 🚫

Any application that accepts submitted TEI XML, or retrieves it, for processing needs to be aware of the risks of injected harmful scripts and executable XML 😬. XML inclusion [W3C.REC-xinclude-20061115] and the use of external entities are open to various kinds of spoofing, and they can also reveal parts of a service in a way that might compromise its security 🙈. Any vulnerability of these kinds is, however, application specific. The TEI namespaces don't contain such elements 🫶.

4.2. Intellectual Property Rights 📜

TEI documents often come out of digitizing cultural heritage materials 🏛️. Texts available in TEI format may be unrestricted, meaning their distribution isn't limited by Digital Rights Management [DRM] or Intellectual Property Rights [IPR] constraints. But TEI documents are heterogeneous, so some parts may be unrestricted while others, like editorial text and annotations, may be subject to DRM restrictions 👀.

The TEI format gives you means for highly granular attribution, all the way down to the content of individual XML elements 💖. Software agents that take part in exchanging or processing TEI may be required to honour this kind of markup. Even when there are no IPR constraints, intellectual property attribution alone requires that document users be able to tell content from different sources apart ✨.

4.3. Authenticity and confidentiality 🔏

Historical archival records are often encoded in TEI, and legal documents may stay binding for centuries after they were written 🕰️. Digitizing and encoding legal texts may need technologies that assure authenticity, like cryptographic checksums and electronic signatures 🦋.

Historical documents may also be confidential, in part or in full 🤫. That can be required by law or by the terms and conditions, such as with donated or deposited text from private sources. A text archive may need content filtering or cryptographic technologies to meet those requirements 💜.

Part 1 is done, bestie, and the rest is coming in part 2 with IANA, the media type registration, and the References 💅🌈

6.2. Informative References ✨

okay so these are the "nice to read but not required" sources, bestie 📚 they're just here for context, not something you have to implement 💅

[DRM]      "Digital rights management", <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
           index.php?title=Digital_rights_management&
           oldid=412653591>.

[IPR]      "Intellectual property", <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
           index.php?title=Intellectual_property&oldid=411690322>.

[ODD]      "Getting Started with P5 ODDs",
           <http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/Customization/odds.xml>.

[W3C.REC-xinclude-20061115]
           Marsh, J., Orchard, D., and D. Veillard, "XML Inclusions
           (XInclude) Version 1.0 (Second Edition)", World Wide Web
           Consortium Recommendation REC-xinclude-20061115,
           November 2006,
           <http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xinclude-20061115>.

Authors' Addresses 🫶

meet the people behind the doc, iykyk 🌸 their contact info is right here, no cap 💖

Laurent Romary
TEI Consortium and INRIA

EMail: laurent.romary@inria.fr
URI:   http://www.tei-c.org/


Sigfrid Lundberg
The Royal Library, Copenhagen
Postbox 2149
1016 Koebenhavn K
Denmark

EMail: slu@kb.dk
URI:   http://sigfrid-lundberg.se/

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc6129 2011-02
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-17: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms