Objectives

1. Completely review the writing system declaration and related constructs and recommendations within the Guidelines (this will include but not be limited to the content of the current Chapters 4 and 25). Specifically, ensure that languages and writings systems can be declared independently. With Unicode/ISO 10646 as the basic document character set, as required by the XML recommendation, the function of the WSD changes completely; it will become a special purpose, optional part of a TEI encoded file, intended for cases were the encoder needs some characters or semantics that Unicode/ISO 10646 do not (yet) provide. Part of this work item will also be to collect use-cases and examples of how this mechanism can be used.
2. Provide a provisional model for text encoding, including both the character encoding and the markup layer.
3. Come up with recommendations and best practice examples both with regard to text encoding and software.
4. Coordinate the work with other TEI working groups and the text encoding community at large.
5. Respond to comments on the relevant portions of TEI P4 routed to this work group by the editors.

Terminology used will be as close to established practice in the character encoding community (especially the Unicode Standard) as possible, while we will strive to make the results comprehensible to all users of the TEI Guidelines.