HypereiDoc is an XML based framework supporting distributed, multi-layered, version-controlled processing of epigraphical, papyrological or similar texts in a modern critical edition. Such studies are typically based on independent work of philologists using annotation systems like the Leiden Conventions. Current initiatives like TEI and Epidoc have definitive limitations both in expressional power and the way how individual results can form a cooperative product. The HypereiDoc framework provides XML schema definition for a set of annotation-based layers connected by an extensive reference system, validating and building tools, and an editor on-line visualizing the base text and the annotations. The framework makes scholars able to work on the same text in a cooperative and distributed way. Our framework has been successfully tested by philologists working on the Hypereides palimpsest.