A (not completely) flippant answer may be "Look at TUSTEP." It is
apparently the world's greatest for creating printed version of very
critical editions in the best German manner. But its learning curve is
formidable.

I remember a conversation with Michael Sperberg-McQueen about the virtues
of Tustep in this regard. I also recall some stuff on the Tustep list
about becoming more XML friendly. I'm not sure whether TEI >Tustep is
possible. But if it were, you could certainly print it in any direction
and with any character set.



On 5/2/11 4:58 PM, "Marjorie Burghart" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Dear list,
>
>What solution would you recommend to someone willing to publish a
>traditional-looking printed version of a critical edition from a TEI
>file, with features like:
>- several layers of footnotes (one layer for textual variants, another
>for biblical references, another for the sources, another for
>"historical" notes, etc.)
>- notes referring to line numbers in the text (instead of footnote calls)
>
>It seems XSLT cannot do such a job alone. Is Latex the only other
>solution?
>In this case, are there any packaged solutions, (TEI+XSL -> LaTeX ->
>PDF/RTF/whatever) or at least tutorials that would make this basic task
>accessible to TEI users?
>If not, I suggest that developping such a tool should be a top priority
>of the TEI community.
>
>Best wishes,
>Marjorie
>
>-- 
>Marjorie BURGHART
>EHESS (pôle de Lyon) / UMR 5648
>Histoire et Archéologie des Mondes Chrétiens et Musulmans Médiévaux
>18 quai Claude Bernard
>69007 Lyon - FRANCE