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The writing system declaration or WSD is an auxiliary document which provides information on the methods used to transcribe portions of text in a particular language and script. We use the term writing system to mean a given method of representing a particular language, in a particular script or alphabet; the WSD specifies one method of representing a given writing system in electronic form. A single WSD thus links three distinct objects:
This chapter describes first the overall structure of the WSD (section 25.1 ), and then the specific elements used to document the natural language, writing system, coded character sets, SGML entity names, and transliteration schemes united by the WSD. Section 25.6 describes how the WSD is associated with different portions of a document. Predefined TEI writing system declarations, which should suffice for many uses, are described in section 25.7 . There follows a brief description of how to create a new WSD on the basis of an existing WSD. Finally, in section 25.8 we provide a formal discussion of the semantics of the writing system declaration.
A writing system declaration is a distinct auxiliary document, separate from any transcription for which it is used. A TEI document specifies the writing system declarations applicable to it by means of declarations in its header, and by means of its use of the global lang attribute, as further specified in section 25.6 . Each writing system declaration is itself a free-standing document, encoded as a single <writingSystemDeclaration> element, and containing the following elements:
These attributes function in the same way as the global id and lang attributes of the main TEI DTD (although for technical reasons the latter is declared differently): the former provides a unique SGML identifier for the element, and the latter identifies the language in which the contents of the element are expressed, using a code from ISO 639.
The overall structure of a writing system declaration is thus as follows:
<writingSystemDeclaration
lang='eng'
name=' ... '
date='1993-05-29'>
<language iso639='...'>
<!-- name of language here -->
</language>
<script>
<!-- description of script here ... -->
</script>
<direction chars=LR lines=TB>
<characters>
<!-- description of character inventory here ... -->
</characters>
</writingSystemDeclaration>
The attributes date and name are required on the <writingSystemDeclaration> element. The date attribute is used to specify the date on which the WSD was written or last changed; this must be given in the format ``yyyy-mm-dd'', as defined by ISO 8601: 1988, Data elements and interchange formats --- Information interchange --- Representation of dates and times .
The name attribute is used to assign a formal name to the writing system declaration, for references to it from elsewhere. It is recommended, though not required, that the name be constructed as an SGML formal public identifier; for purposes of writing system declarations, this means it should follow the pattern of the following examples:
-//TEI P2: 1993//NOTATION WSD for Modern English//EN -//WWP 1993//NOTATION WSD for 17th-century English//EN -//OTA 1991//NOTATION WSD for Old English//EN -//GLDV 1997//NOTATION WSD Mittelhochdeutsch//DEThat is, the identifier should consist of:
The other elements of the WSD are described in the following sections.
The DTD for writing system declarations is included in file teiwsd2.dtd ; a writing system declaration will thus begin with a document type declaration invoking that file:
<!DOCTYPE writingSystemDeclaration
PUBLIC "-//TEI P3//DTD Auxiliary Document Type:
Writing System Declaration//EN"
"teiwsd2.dtd" [
<!-- entity sets are declared and invoked here -->
]>
The formal declaration of the writing system declaration is as follows:
<!-- 25.1: Writing System Declaration -->
<!-- Text Encoding Initiative: Guidelines for Electronic -->
<!-- Text Encoding and Interchange. Document TEI P3, 1994. -->
<!-- Copyright (c) 1994 ACH, ACL, ALLC. Permission to copy -->
<!-- in any form is granted, provided this notice is -->
<!-- included in all copies. -->
<!-- These materials may not be altered; modifications to -->
<!-- these DTDs should be performed as specified in the -->
<!-- Guidelines in chapter "Modifying the TEI DTD." -->
<!-- These materials subject to revision. Current versions -->
<!-- are available from the Text Encoding Initiative. -->
<!ENTITY % INHERITED '#IMPLIED' >
<!ENTITY % ISO-date 'CDATA' >
<!-- Embed entities for TEI generic identifiers. -->
<!ENTITY % TEI.wsdNames system 'wdgis2.ent' >
%TEI.wsdNames;
<!ENTITY % a.global '
id ID #IMPLIED
lang CDATA %INHERITED' >
<!ELEMENT writingSystemDeclaration
- - (language, script, direction*,
characters, note*) >
<!ATTLIST writingSystemDeclaration
%a.global;
name CDATA #REQUIRED
date %ISO-date #REQUIRED >
<!-- ... declarations from section 25.2 -->
<!-- (Language identification) -->
<!-- go here ... -->
<!-- ... declarations from section 25.3 -->
<!-- (Script and writing direction) -->
<!-- go here ... -->
<!-- ... declarations from section 25.4.1 -->
<!-- (Base components) -->
<!-- go here ... -->
<!-- ... declarations from section 25.4.2 -->
<!-- (Exceptions to the base components) -->
<!-- go here ... -->
<!-- ... declarations from section 25.5 -->
<!-- (Notes) -->
<!-- go here ... -->
The <language> element is used to name the language associated with the WSD. Its iso639 attribute gives the ISO standard code for the language as defined by ISO 639: 1988. Code for the representation of names of languages .
If the language in question is not included in the list in ISO 639, the value of the attribute iso639 should be the empty string, as in the following example:
<language iso639=''>Various</language>
The <language> element should not be confused with the global lang attribute; the element identifies the language whose writing system is being documented, while the attribute identifies the language in which the description is being written. A writing system declaration for classical Greek, for example, which itself is written in English, would have the value eng for the lang attribute on the top-level element, and the value grc for the iso639 attribute on the <language> element:
<writingSystemDeclaration
id='grc.beta'
lang=eng
name='-//TEI P2: 1993//NOTATION WSD for TLG Beta Code
transliteration of ancient greek//EN'
date='1993-05-29'>
<language iso639='grc'>Classical Greek. This WSD documents the Beta
transcription code for classical Greek developed by the Thesaurus
Linguae Graecae of the University of California, Irvine.</language>
<!-- ... -->
</writingSystemDeclaration>
Normally, the language described is a natural language; in some cases, however, artificial languages, dialects, or other sublanguages may be usefully regarded as a language and documented in a writing system declaration. When a sublanguage is documented, a description of the sublanguage should be included in the <language> element:
<language iso639='jpn'>
Japanese (specialized writing system for waka)
</language>
When a writing system declaration is prepared solely in order to document a coded character set or entity set suitable for use with many natural languages, the content of the <language> element should be ``Various'' (or the equivalent in the language of the WSD):
<writingSystemDeclaration
lang=eng
name='-//TEI P2: 1993//NOTATION WSD for ISO 646 IRV//FR'
date='1993-05-29'>
<language iso639=''>Plusieurs</language>
<!-- ... -->
</writingSystemDeclaration>
The <language> element is formally defined thus:
<!-- 25.2: Language identification -->
<!ELEMENT language - O (#PCDATA) >
<!ATTLIST language %a.global;
iso639 CDATA #REQUIRED >
<!-- This fragment is used in sec. 25.1 -->
The writing system itself is described in general terms using the following elements:
The <script> element contains a prose description of the script, alphabet, syllabary, or other system of writing used to write the language in question. The <direction> element indicates the direction(s) in which the script is conventionally written. Both these elements are provided for the sake of human readers; neither is likely to be suited to machine processing without human intervention.
The Latin alphabet conventionally used to write English, for example, might be described thus:
<script>Latin alphabet (with diacritics for loan words)</script> <direction chars=LR lines=TB>
The chars and lines attributes are used to indicate the direction in which characters within a line, and lines on the page, may legitimately be written using the script in question. If more than one direction is possible, the <direction> element may repeat or its attributes may be given more complex values. A script written vertically top to bottom, with lines arranged either left to right or right to left, for example, might be declared either thus:
<direction chars=TB lines=LR> <direction chars=TB lines=RL>or thus:
<direction chars=TB lines='LR RL'>
In very complex cases, the attributes may be given prose values:
<direction chars='boustrophedon: LR, then RL, then LR, etc.'
lines='TB'>
or the element may be omitted entirely (in which case experts on the
script should be consulted for advice on proper processing):
<script>Japanese (mixture of kanji, hiragana, katakana)</script>
<!-- If you don't already know how Japanese is written,
no DIRECTION element in the world will help you. -->
It should be noted that the <direction> element describes conventional display only: all scripts are subject to unusual treatment for aesthetic or other reasons, and such unusual treatment need not be foreseen here. (The Latin alphabet, for example, although conventionally written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, can be set vertically in signs or in other special cases.) Unusual methods of arranging the text on a page are best documented within the document instance by means of the global rend attribute.
The <script> and <direction> elements are declared thus:
<!-- 25.3: Script and writing direction -->
<!ELEMENT script - O (#PCDATA) >
<!ATTLIST script %a.global; >
<!ELEMENT direction - O EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST direction %a.global;
lines CDATA #REQUIRED
chars CDATA #REQUIRED >
<!-- This fragment is used in sec. 25.1 -->
The characters or graphic symbols of the writing system are documented in the <characters> element of the WSD. This documentation can take any of the following forms:
The coded character sets, entity sets, and external WSDs referred to are called the base components of the writing system declaration. The base components of a WSD are declared within the <characters> element using the following elements:
The elements <codedCharSet> , <baseWsd> , and <entitySet> are all members of the class baseStandard and inherit from it the following attributes:
Some simple examples of the use of these elements follow:
<codedCharSet name='ANSI X3.4' authority='national'>
<codedCharSet name='ISO 646: 1991' authority='ISO'>
<baseWsd name='-//TEI P3: 1994//WSD ISO 8859-1//EN'
authority='TEI'>
<entitySet name='ISO 8879:1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN'
authority='ISO'>
The base components identify the set of characters used in the writing system, and further specify, for each character, the string(s) of bytes and entity names used to encode it in the text. This information may be modified by further information given within the <exceptions> element, as described below in section 25.4.2 .
The elements for identifying the base components of the writing system declaration are declared thus:
<!-- 25.4.1: Base components -->
<!ELEMENT characters - O (codedCharSet*, baseWsd*,
entitySet*, exceptions?) >
<!ATTLIST characters %a.global; >
<!ENTITY % a.baseStandard '
name CDATA #REQUIRED
authority (tei | iso | national | private |
none) #REQUIRED' >
<!ELEMENT codedCharSet - O EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST codedCharSet %a.global;
%a.baseStandard; >
<!ELEMENT baseWsd - O EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST baseWsd %a.global;
%a.baseStandard; >
<!ELEMENT entitySet - O EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST entitySet %a.global;
%a.baseStandard; >
<!-- This fragment is used in sec. 25.1 -->
The <exceptions> element contains definitions for any character which differs in any respect from the specifications contained in the base components of the WSD. If no base components are named, then every character in the writing system must be defined explicitly.
The documentation for each character in the writing system indicates at least the following:
The <exceptions> element contains a series of <character> elements only, each of which may contain descriptions of the character (including its name), notes, and a series of <form> elements documenting the different forms the character can take. Attributes on the <character> and <form> elements are used to convey the information mentioned above: byte string, entity names, UCS-4 code, etc.
A simple example:
<character class=lexical>
<form string='A' ucs-4='0041' afiicode='0041'>
<desc>Latin capital letter A</desc>
</form>
</character>
When transliteration schemes are used, the string used to encode the character will typically be in a different alphabet:
<character class=lexical>
<form string='*G' entityStd="Ggr" ucs-4='0393' afiicode='260044'>
<desc>Greek capital letter Gamma</desc>
</form>
</character>
The UCS-4 code is given as eight hexadecimal digits, one for each four bits of the thirty-two-bit value. For legibility a hyphen may be inserted as a separator after the fourth hexadecimal digit: 00000308 has the same meaning as 0000-0308 . Since in almost all cases at present the leading sixteen bits are zero, however, by convention the leading four hexadecimal zeros may be dropped entirely: the value 0308 is identical in meaning to the value 0000-0308 .
In some cases, the character is represented not as a single UCS character but as a sequence of such characters; in this case, each thirty-two-bit value except the last must be followed by a plus sign:
<character class='lexical'>
<form string='*=+U'
entityStd="Ucdgr"
ucs-4='03A5+0302+0308'
afiicode='F300EC'>
<desc>Greek capital letter Upsilon with
circumflex and diaresis</desc>
</form>
</character>
If a given <character> element has more than one encoding using ISO 10646 (e.g. both as ``a-umlaut'' and as ``a'' plus ``umlaut''), then both encodings may be given, separated by blanks:
<character class='lexical'>
<form string=''
entityStd="Auml"
afiicode='F127"
ucs-4='0041+0308 00C4' >
<desc>Latin capital letter A with umlaut</desc>
</form>
</character>
In most cases, identifying the character or character form by means of its UCS-4 and AFII codes will suffice to identify the character for all later users of the WSD. In some cases, however, further information must be provided. This may be provided in a <note> attached to the <character> or <form> element:
<character class='lexical'>
<form string='N'
entityLoc="nn" >
ucs-4="0274" >
<desc>Standard ms symbol for double n.</desc>
</form>
<note>This character has the form of a capital-letter N,
but is written the same height as a lower-case N.
Its appearance is thus that of UCS-4 0274, but it
does not have the same semantics.
</note>
</character>
In some cases, it will be necessary or useful to provide an image of the character in question, or to refer to a standard reference work for such an image. The following <character> element might be used to describe, for example, a common Old French abbreviation for ``est'', for which the local entity est has been defined:
<character class='lexical'>
<form string='' entityLoc="est">
<desc>Old French abbreviation for 'est': lowercase
'e' with a tilde or macron above.</desc>
<note>For an image of this character, see
Cappelli, p. 113, column 1, line 4
(leftmost and rightmost item).</note>
</form>
</character>
Here, ``Cappelli'' is the name of a standard reference work which may
be consulted to see what the character in question looks like. [ see note 127 ]
Where recourse to reference works is impossible, a picture of the character may be encoded using any standard graphics format, and associated with the character by standard SGML techniques. The SGML document must then have:
<!NOTATION cgm PUBLIC 'ISO 8632/2//NOTATION
Computer Graphics Metafile
Character encoding//EN'>
<!ENTITY estFigure system 'est.cgm' NDATA cgm>
In the body of the WSD itself:
<character class='lexical'>
<form string=''
entityLoc="est">
<desc>Old French abbreviation for 'est': lowercase
'e' with a tilde or macron above.
</desc>
<extFigure notation='cgm' entity='estFigure'>
<note>For an image of this character, see
Cappelli, p. 110, column 1, line 4
(leftmost and rightmost item).
</note>
</form>
</character>
Despite now having a picture of the character, we retain the prose
description and reference to Cappelli, for the sake of those without
ready access to the appropriate graphics processors.
The <exceptions> element and its contents are declared thus:
<!-- 25.4.2: Exceptions to the base components -->
<!ELEMENT exceptions - O (character*) >
<!ATTLIST exceptions %a.global; >
<!ELEMENT character - O (desc*, form+, note*) >
<!ATTLIST character %a.global;
class (lexical | punc | lexpunc | digit
| space | DL | LD | dia | joiner |
other) lexical >
<!ELEMENT desc - O (#PCDATA) >
<!ATTLIST desc %a.global; >
<!ELEMENT form - O (desc+, (figure | extFigure)*,
note*) >
<!ATTLIST form %a.global;
string CDATA #IMPLIED
entityStd ENTITIES #IMPLIED
entityLoc ENTITIES #IMPLIED
ucs-4 CDATA #IMPLIED
afiicode CDATA #IMPLIED
codedCharSet IDREF #IMPLIED >
<!ELEMENT figure - - CDATA >
<!ATTLIST figure %a.global;
notation NAME #REQUIRED >
<!ELEMENT extFigure - O EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST extFigure %a.global;
notation NAME #REQUIRED
entity ENTITY #REQUIRED >
<!-- This fragment is used in sec. 25.1 -->
Public or private coded character sets and entity sets may be usefully documented using WSDs; the WSD will make explicit some information (such as the UCS-4 and AFII codes) not normally given explicitly in character set standards or public entity sets. The coded character set or entity set being documented should be included by means of a <codedCharSet> or <entitySet> element; the <exceptions> element should include one <character> element for each character included in the character set or the entity set. Deciding whether to treat two entities or two bit patterns as separate characters or as forms of the same character will require knowledge of the script involved, and different encoders may reach different decisions. In cases of doubt, though, it is usually acceptable practice to treat each bit pattern in a coded character set, and each entity in an entity set, as a distinct character.
A non-standard local coded character set (e.g. an EBCDIC character set) may be documented in a WSD by defining one <character> element for each printable code point in the character set, adding the names of standard (and local) entities, UCS-4 codes, and AFII codes as appropriate. Since this extra information is useful in packing documents for interchange, and in processing pattern arguments in the TEI extended-pointer syntax described in section 14.2 , those responsible for a local installation are strongly encouraged to document the local system character set in a WSD, if it is not already so documented.
When a script is encoded not in a character set designed for it, but in one designed for another script, (e.g. Greek encoded using the Latin alphabet), a transliteration scheme is necessary. In documenting such a transliteration scheme, the coded character set actually in use should be named as a base component. An <exceptions> element can then be used to override the normal meaning of the individual byte strings used in the transliteration. For example, the following <character> element overrides the usual association of the byte representing A with the Latin letter A and substitutes instead an association with the Greek letter alpha:
<character class=lexical>
<form string='A' entityStd="agr" ucs-4='03B1' afiicode='260061'>
<desc>Greek small letter alpha</desc>
</form>
</character>
Care should be taken in choosing or developing transliteration schemes
to ensure that they are unambiguously reversible.
Notes on the WSD, individual characters, or individual character forms may be included in the <note> element at the appropriate level.
Unlike its counterpart in the main TEI DTD, the <note> element within the writing system declaration may contain no paragraphs and no phrase-level elements: only character data. It is formally declared thus:
<!-- 25.5: Notes --> <!ELEMENT note - O (#PCDATA) > <!ATTLIST note %a.global; > <!-- This fragment is used in sec. 25.1 -->
The writing system declaration is associated with different portions of a main document by means of the global lang attribute. This attribute is defined as an SGML IDREF and its value must be the SGML identifier on a <language> element within the TEI header of the main document. The <language> element in turn provides, in its wsd attribute, the SGML name of the entity (usually an external file) containing the writing system declaration associated with that lang value. For a more detailed account of this process, compare the discussion in section 26.1 .
At least one writing system declaration must be associated with any TEI document: this follows from the requirement that a value be specified for the lang attribute on the outermost element (<tei.2> or <teiCorpus.2> ) of any TEI document, since the lang attribute is required to point at a <language> element in the TEI header, which in turn is required to indicate an entity containing the writing system declaration associated with that language.
The Text Encoding Initiative has defined standard writing system declarations for the following languages and scripts:
Work is underway on a standard writing system declarations for Japanese; resources permitting, declarations for Korean and Chinese will also be made.
In addition to the language-specific WSDs just mentioned, the TEI has defined a number of WSDs to document specific public coded character sets and entity sets. These are used as components in the language-specific WSDs, and may be similarly used for locally developed WSDs. WSDs for specific ISO standard character sets include:
Writing system declarations are also under preparation for a number of commercial character sets in wide use:
The Text Encoding Initiative has prepared entity sets for use in transcribing some languages; these are distributed both as SGML entity sets and as TEI writing system declarations documenting those entity sets:
All TEI writing system declarations are distributed with the TEI document type definitions.
The standard TEI writing system declarations are expected to meet the needs of many encoders; some, however, will need to prepare new WSDs to describe character-encoding schemes not included in the standard WSDs.
This section describes the meaning of the WSD in more formal terms than have been used elsewhere in this chapter; it can be skipped by most readers, but should be read carefully by those who wish to write complex writing system declarations or to implement software to process writing system declarations or to interpret them in the processing of TEI-conformant documents.
A writing system declaration provides a complicated bundle of mappings:
The effects of naming coded character sets, entity sets, and other WSDs as base components may now be defined thus:
If reference is made only to standard character sets and entity sets, there is no mechanical method of associating the `characters' involved in one mapping with those involved in another. E.g. a reference to ISO 646 IRV provides a map from code point 5/11 to a character one might call ``left square bracket''. A reference to entity set ISOpub1 provides a map from the entity name lbr to what should probably be considered the same character. There is however no guarantee that any processing software will necessarily be sufficiently intelligent to make this association of mappings automatically; it requires hard-coded knowledge of the specifics of certain character sets and entity sets.
When, however, base WSDs are used to document important entity sets and character sets, it does become possible to define mechanical methods of associating <character> elements in different base components.
When multiple bases of the same type are referred to, the effects are these:
The result of invoking multiple base WSDs is thus a merged WSD in which the <form> and <character> elements have been merged as prescribed. If the merger is impossible because the two WSDs are incompatible, a semantic error occurs. A set of WSDs is compatible and may be invoked together if all of the following are true:
We can now define the semantics of the <exceptions> element.
The base components provide a preliminary set of mappings, as described above. For convenience let us call this the default map. The <exceptions> element allows the user to modify the default map by defining further mappings and by overriding parts of the default map. There are three cases: a new <character> element replaces an old one, is merged with an old one, or is added to the set without affecting any old ones.
If a <form> element within <exceptions> (F-new) `collides' with a <form> element in the default map (F-old), then the parent <character> element of F-new replaces the parent element of F-old. Two <form> elements collide if they have the same values for codedCharSet and string . (N.B. if this condition occurs within the default map, the two <form> elements are merged.)
For example, to define the TLG Beta code transliteration of alpha as a we first name ISO 646 IRV as a base component; this has the effect of creating the following (possibly imaginary) <form> element:
<character id=a class=lexical>
<form string='a'>
<desc>lowercase latin letter A</desc>
</form>
</character>
We then include the following within the <exception> element:
<character id=alpha class=lexical>
<form string='a' entityStd='gkalpha'>
<desc>lowercase Greek alpha</desc>
</form>
</character>
This overrides the <character> element for latin A, and indicates that in the transliteration scheme documented by this WSD, character 6/01 represents a Greek alpha, no matter what ISO 646 says.
If a <character> element within <exceptions> `overlaps' with one in the default map, then the two <character> elements are merged. Two <character> elements overlap if any of their <form> elements name the same entity or UCS-4 code. (N.B. if these conditions occur within the default map, they lead to merger either of the two <form> elements --- for entity name overlap --- or of the two <character> elements.)
For example: suppose we wish to document the three-Rs transcription described in section 4.1.2 . We name ISO 646 IRV as a base character set (or WSD) and add the following exceptions:
<exceptions>
<character id=r class=lexical>
<desc>lowercase latin letter r</desc>
<form string='' entityLoc='r' ucs-4='0072'>
<desc>'normal' form, similar to modern print r and to
Cappelli, p. 318, line 2, items 3, 6, 15.</desc>
</form>
<form string='' entityLoc='r2' ucs-4='0072'>
<desc>'round' form, usually following 'o', similar
to a modern Arabic digit 2 (or to Cappelli, p. 318,
line 2, items 13 and 14)</desc>
</form>
<form string='' entityLoc='r3' ucs-4='0072'>
<desc>'small-cap' form, like a capital R but
same height as lowercase (cf. Cappelli, p. 318,
line 1, items 2 and 3)</desc>
</form>
</character>
</exceptions>
As a second example, imagine we wish to document a local entity set for Old English in which we define local entities t (thorn), d (eth), and a (aesc). Assuming the TEI has provided a WSD for the Latin 1 entities, the whole WSD is this:
<writingSystemDeclaration
name='-//OTA 1990//NOTATION WSD Old English entities//EN'
date='1993-05-25'
lang=eng>
<language iso639=''>Various</language>
<script>Latin alphabet, extended</script>
<direction lines=TB chars=LR>
<characters>
<baseWsd name='-//TEI P3: 1994//NOTATION
WSD ISO Added Latin 1//EN'
authority=TEI>
<exceptions>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='thorn' entityLoc='t'>
<desc>lowercase latin letter thorn</desc>
</form></character>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='Thorn' entityLoc='T'>
<desc>uppercase latin letter thorn</desc>
</form></character>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='eth' entityLoc='d'>
<desc>lowercase latin letter eth</desc>
</form></character>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='Eth' entityLoc='D'>
<desc>uppercase latin letter eth</desc>
</form></character>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='aelig' entityLoc='a'>
<desc>lowercase latin aesc (= digraph aelig)</desc>
</form></character>
<character class=lexical>
<form entityStd='AElig' entityLoc='A'>
<desc>uppercase latin aesc (= digraph aelig)</desc>
</form></character>
</exceptions>
</characters>
<note>This WSD is just to document the local entities; it should be
named as a base WSD by the actual writing system declaration.
</note>
</writingSystemDeclaration>
This has the effect of merging the <character> elements for thorn , eth , and aesc (or a-e ligature) defined in the ISO Latin 1 WSD with those given here, which specify the local entity name. The <form> elements may or may not be merged, so the software may or may not actually realize that the local entity t corresponds with the UCS-4 code given in the TEI WSD for ISO Latin 1.
The full local WSD can then be this:
<writingSystemDeclaration
name='-//OTA 1993//NOTATION Old English WSD//EN'
date='1993-05-25'
lang=eng>
<language iso639=ang>Anglo-Saxon / Old English</language>
<script>Latin alphabet, extended</script>
<direction lines=TB chars=LR>
<characters>
<baseWsd name='-//TEI P3: 1994//NOTATION WSD ISO 646 IRV//EN'
authority='TEI'>
<baseWsd name='-//OTA 1990//NOTATION
WSD Old English entities//EN'
authority='private'>
<baseWsd name='-//TEI P3: 1994//NOTATION
WSD ISO Added Latin 1//EN'
authority='TEI'>
</characters>
</writingSystemDeclaration>
We refer explicitly to ISO Latin 1, for clarity, but in theory it has already been included in -//OTA 1990//WSD Old English entities//EN and need not be repeated. At this time, the rules for merger would force our local <form> elements to be merged with the standard <form> elements, so the local entity t would map correctly into the UCS-4 character set.
If a <character> element has no <form> children which collide with anything in the default map, and does not itself overlap with anything in the default map, then it is simply added to the default map.
For example, suppose we wish to document an abbreviation used for Old French ``est'' in our manuscript, which resembles e with a tilde or macron. Since we expect we may have more abbreviations for ``est'', we use the local entity name est1 for this one. Within <exceptions> , we declare the abbreviation thus:
<character id=est1 class=lexical>
<form string='' entityLoc='est1'>
<desc>abbreviation for 'est', lowercase latin e
with a tilde or macron above, similar to
Cappelli p. 113, col 1, items 4(a) and 8.</desc>
</form>
</character>
In some cases, the <form> and <character> elements introduced notionally by reference to a coded character set or entity set, or introduced explicitly by reference to a base WSD, may be considered as referring to identical objects; this is called merger. Two <form> elements F1 and F2 can be merged if they both have the same values for codedCharSet and string , or if codedCharSet and string are unspecified (implied) in at least one. When F1 and F2 are merged, the result is a (possibly imaginary) <form> element (F3) the attributes of which are derived thus:
The children of the new element are derived by taking all the <desc> children of F1, then all the <desc> children of F2; all the <figure> children of F1, then those of F2; all the <note> children of F1, then all the <note> children of F2. In other words, all the children of the source elements survive as children of the result element.
Provided that their forms are compatible, two <character> elements C1 and C2 may be merged unless their values for class differ. The resulting <character> element C3 has the same value for its class attribute as C1 and C2, and all the children of C1 and C2 are made children of C3 (<desc> children first, then <form> children).
Note that merger is sometimes required by the semantic rules given above, and sometimes optional. If merger is required but not legal (because the two elements to be merged are incompatible), then a semantic error has occurred and the two base WSDs which give rise to it should not be invoked together.
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