Special characters

Characters outside the ordinary alphabet are written as MENOTA/MUFI entities between colons:

:rrot:       r rotunda
:thorn:      þ
:eth:        ð
:aelig:      æ

They compile to entity references in the TEI (&rrot;, þ, and so on).

The entity browser

The entity browser — the ꝥ button in the editor header — lists the roughly 2,000 MENOTA and MUFI characters, displayed in the Junicode font.

• Search by name or description, or choose a category.
• Click Insert entity to insert :name: at the cursor.

Diplomatic forms

Selecting an entity shows its Translation: the form it takes on the diplomatic and normalized levels.

• Change it and press Enter to save.
• Reset to default restores the original.
• Changed entities are marked custom.

This is what makes :rrot:egn become regn on the diplomatic level. See MENOTA levels for the three forms.

Your own entities

Characters that are not in the MENOTA/MUFI set can be added with the + button in the browser’s header. Give:

• the name used in the shorthand (without colons);
• the character;
• optionally its Unicode code point, a category and a description.

Your own entities can be edited and deleted from the list.

Caution

Your own entities and diplomatic forms are stored with the application, not in projects. They apply to all your projects, and are not included when a project is given to someone else.

Changing an entity affects every document compiled afterwards. Deleting one leaves :name: in the transcription without a definition, so the generated XML may reference an undeclared entity.

Characters and words

An entity is part of the word it is written in:

:rrot:egn

is one word, with the entity as its first character. A standalone single-letter entity such as :inodot: (the word í) is a word of its own.

Punctuation written as an entity is a separate <pc> element when it stands alone between spaces:

þa :middot: þo

Attached to letters, the same entity is part of the word: :middot:Q:middot: is the numeral ·Q·.