TEI LiteTEI Lite was the name adopted for what the TEI editors originally conceived of as a simple demonstration of how the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme might be adopted to meet 90% of the needs of 90% of the TEI user community. In retrospect, it was predictable that many people should imagine TEI Lite to be all there is... was the name adopted for what the TEIThe Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains an eponymous technical standard, a journal, a wiki, a SourceForge repository and a toolchain.... editors originally conceived of as a simple demonstration of how the TEIThe Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains an eponymous technical standard, a journal, a wiki, a SourceForge repository and a toolchain.... (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme might be adopted to meet 90% of the needs of 90% of the TEIThe Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains an eponymous technical standard, a journal, a wiki, a SourceForge repository and a toolchain.... user community. In retrospect, it was predictable that many people should imagine TEI LiteTEI Lite was the name adopted for what the TEI editors originally conceived of as a simple demonstration of how the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme might be adopted to meet 90% of the needs of 90% of the TEI user community. In retrospect, it was predictable that many people should imagine TEI Lite to be all there is... to be all there is to TEIThe Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains an eponymous technical standard, a journal, a wiki, a SourceForge repository and a toolchain...., or find TEI LiteTEI Lite was the name adopted for what the TEI editors originally conceived of as a simple demonstration of how the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) encoding scheme might be adopted to meet 90% of the needs of 90% of the TEI user community. In retrospect, it was predictable that many people should imagine TEI Lite to be all there is... to be far too heavy for their needs.

The original TEI Lite (1996) was based largely on observations of existing and previous practice in the encoding of texts, particularly as manifest in the collections of the Oxford Text Archive and other collections of the period. It is therefore unsurprising that it seems to have become, if not a de facto standard, at least a common point of departure for electronic text centres and encoding projects world wide. Maybe the fact that we actually produced this shortish, readable, manual for it also helped.