Whatever happened to interchange?

Abstract

The adoption of XML and encoding standards such as those developed by the Text Encoding Initiative was accompanied by expectations of easy interoperability which are now widely seen as unfulfilled. The related but distinct concept of 'interchange' has received much less attention. This article argues that, particularly for sophisticated digital edition projects using XML, interchange is a more practical goal, and that approached in a specific way, it is highly beneficial not only to potential end users of the project's data but also to the project itself. The article illustrates specific strategies and approaches to enabling and facilitating interchange, using work undertaken on the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) project as a case study.