Add. 17,273 | https://bl.syriac.uk/ms/1108

[GiuliaSecli]

How to encode a list of letters with examples in Syriac? Thank you!

https://github.com/srophe/britishLibrary-data/blob/a3deaa41b23807f430586ebaf78c74349e0f5c0c/data/tei/1108.xml#L463

[wlpotter]

Thanks @GiuliaSecli! It looks like this may be a table? There is a way to encode tables in the XML, but it can be kind of tricky and I don't think we have it yet in our documentation since it's rare. Go ahead and leave this issue open for now, and @davidamichelson and I will take a look

[GiuliaSecli]

Yes, it could be a table constructed like this: letter of the Bardesanes alphabet - cipher word - word according to the proper alphabet. Here we can read a little more about this alphabet: https://archive.org/details/JournalOfSacredLiterature/page/n479/mode/1up?view=theater.

Thank you.

[wlpotter]

Okay, one way to do this in TEI is as follows:

<quote xml:lang="syr">
  <locus from="1a"/>
  <table>
    <row>
      <cell>ܛ</cell>
      <cell>(ܐܠܗܐ) ܛܥܢܛ</cell>
    </row>
    <row>
      <cell>ܥ</cell>
      <cell>ܥܣܨܗܛ (ܠܡܝܢܐ)</cell>
    </row>
  </table>
</quote>

I do wonder if the word in parentheses is in the manuscript or is supplied by Wright? In the latter case we may want to leave this for handling like we do with 'sic', etc. I think for now, could you leave an XML comment (<!-- like this -->) here that this is a table. Then we can leave this issue open as a reminder to review how to encode this excerpt

[GiuliaSecli]

I think that the word in round brackets is in the manuscript. The words in square brackets or with a question mark could be Wright's conjecture. I have included a comment and set up the table because I think it makes more sense to encode that part of the text in this way.

Thank you, Will!

[wlpotter]

Thanks @GiuliaSecli ! Let's leave this issue open, then, so we'll know to handle any oddities in the html display from the table, or from Wright's use of square brackets and question mark