Projects and files

Project files

Work is saved as a project file with the extension .teis. It is a ZIP archive containing:

• the transcription in shorthand (source.dsl);
• the compiled TEI-XML (output.xml);
• confirmed lemmas and analyses, word by word;
• annotations;
• manuscript metadata;
• for imported TEI files, the original XML, so that it can be written back unchanged.

Because the project holds the shorthand, the compiled output and the scholarship together, a .teis file is the thing to back up, move between computers or hand to a collaborator. The shorthand and XML inside it are also readable with any ZIP tool, which makes a project a reasonable long-term archive even without Saga-Scribe.

Open

Open (Ctrl+O, Cmd+O on macOS) opens:

• a project file (.teis);
• a plain shorthand file (.dsl or .txt).

Opening a project restores the transcription along with lemmas, annotations and metadata. Opening a shorthand file starts from the text alone; lemmas and annotations are not present in a plain text file.

Projects saved with older versions of Saga-Scribe can still be opened. The project file format is versioned separately from the application and older formats are kept loadable.

Save

Save (Ctrl+S) saves the project. The first save asks for a location; subsequent saves overwrite the same file. Saving is refused while the shorthand contains errors, so a broken compile never replaces a good project.

Note

If you are experimenting with a new version or with an in-development nightly build, work on a copy of the project. See Installation.

Plain shorthand files

A .dsl or .txt file contains only the shorthand: the text and its markers. It does not contain lemmas, annotations or metadata, and it does not remember which template was used. It is useful for version control, for sharing a transcription with someone who does not use Saga-Scribe, or for editing the text in another program.

To keep the scholarship, use a project. To exchange the edition with the world, use TEI-XML export.

Imported files

When a TEI-XML file is imported, the original file is kept inside the project as well. That is what allows Saga-Scribe to write back unedited passages byte for byte. The editor marks such documents Imported.

See Importing existing files for the round-trip behaviour and its guarantees.