This paper provides an introduction to the Text Encoding Initia-tive (TEI), focused at bringing in newcomers who have to deal with a digital document project and are looking at the capacity that the TEI environment may have to fulfil his needs. To th
is end, we avoid a strictly technical presentation of the TEI and concentrate on the actual issues that such projects face, with parallel made on the situation within two institutions. While a quick walkthrough the TEI technical framework is provided, the papers ends up by showing the essential role of the community in the actual technical contributions that are being brought to the TEI.
