ENcoding COmplex Writing Systems (ENCOWS) discussion list

Encoding Complex Writing Systems

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Welcome to the ENcoding COmplex Writing Systems (ENCOWS) discussion list. This list arises from a first workshop on applying EpiDoc/TEI markup to complex, non-alphabetic scripts organized by Christian Prager and held at the University of Bonn, at which Mayan, Aztec, Linear A and Cypro-Minoan, Hieroglyphic Luwian, and Cuneiform were represented. We welcome discussion of all aspects of encoding complex writing in these and other languages, including epigraphy, text transcription, object and historical metadata, vocabularies and terminology, publication and infrastructure.

We plan to discuss the following topics:

1. Text description
      - Encoding of original characters and their alignment/layout (tei:sourceDoc/EpiDoc; SVG; separate Character dictionaries)
      - Encoding of (phonematic) transcription and philological markup (Unicode; EpiDoc; ...?): https://goo.gl/RvS5zu 
      - Linking between the two (RDF; id-pairs; xpointer; …?)
2. Terminology to describe features of complex writing systems: https://goo.gl/f5edy3
     - Collate markup features (superset of everyone's projects)
     - Vocabulary for decipherment, transcription, transnumeration…
     - Vocabulary for logograms/phonograms/semograms/...
     - Typology of ligatures/monograms
3. Metadata of the text artefacts
     - Collate historical/descriptive features (superset of everyone's projects)
     - Metadata and their mapping onto TEI: https://goo.gl/ISc5bp
     - Shared vocabularies / metadata standards
4. Shared infrastructure and research environment 

     - Publication platform.
     - Customizable tools.