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On Thu, 25 Apr 2002 at 14:19:56 Charles Muller wrote: > > but I would prefer to use a different tag, if an appropriate one is > available. Also relevant here is the way I have been using the "lang" > attribute in my dictionaries, where the attribute values of "lang" are > always an ISO 639 value, such as lang="ko", lang="ja", lang="en", etc. I > guess I could make an exception and add CJK as a possible attribute > value, but it would then be getting a bit unsystematic. > You have touched a sensitive issue. The problem is that as defined in the TEI, "language" does not mean "language", it means "language written in a particular writing system". Consequently one cannot use a particular value of the "lang" attribute either to tag all instances of text written in a particular language (irrespective of writing system), or to tag all instances of characters written in a particular writing system (irrespective of language). Since these are both things that one needs to do, this is a highly unsatisfactory situation and it is to be hoped that it will be remedied in the P5. The solution is to modify the TEI DTD to introduce a further global attribute indicating the writing system. Than you could mark up text, for example, like this: "The word <w lang="ko" ws="cjk">[a word]</w> means [whatever it means]." Moreover, if you wanted to write the Korean word in transcription, you could write: "The word <w lang="ko" ws="lat">[a word]</w> means [whatever it means]." If you want to see an example of how this solution to the problem has been applied, you can have a look at my edition of the Budapest Glagolitic Fragments, and in particular at the way the commentary is marked up. You will find it at http://userwww.port.ac.uk/cleminsr/introd.html Ralph Cleminson