Overview
ISO/IEC TR 9573-13:1991 is a Technical Report that documents public entity sets for mathematics and science to support SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) interchange. Published as part of the ISO/IEC TR 9573 series, this informational report provides definitional character entity repertoires, naming conventions and usage guidance so SGML documents can represent widely used mathematical and scientific glyphs that are not always available in standard coded character sets or easily keyboarded.
Key topics
- Public entity sets for mathematical and scientific symbols - definitional entity declarations that name symbols (e.g., fractions, Greek letters, operators, relations, delimiters, blackboard-bold, fraktur, script).
- Entity declaration format - use of SDATA entities that contain mnemonic text like "[frac78]" plus a descriptive comment (examples: ).
- Display entity sets - guidance to create corresponding system-specific display entity sets where entity text is replaced by device- or font-specific data (e.g., numeric character references or phototypesetter codes).
- Entity naming conventions - English-derived, mnemonic, case-sensitive names composed of letters and numerals, with systematic prefixes/suffixes (examples: prefixes i=left, u=up, b=back; suffixes f=filled, s=small, z=two of).
- Organization and reuse - grouping of entities to align with character-set structures (e.g., ISO 6937) and permission to copy/compose new sets for conforming SGML systems (with ISO copyright notice).
- References - links to SGML baseline standard ISO 8879 and MathSci identifiers (American Mathematical Society mathfile references) used for glyph identification.
Practical applications and users
This report is practical for:
- SGML/markup engineers and DTD authors - to include standard entity names for math/science symbols in document types.
- Publishers and academic journals - to ensure consistent interchange of mathematical content across systems and vendors.
- Formatter and typesetter vendors - to implement display entity sets that map entity names to device-specific glyphs or font codes.
- Digital libraries and archives - for long-term preservation and interchange of scientific documents that use special glyphs.
- Software implementers - of converters, XML/SGML toolchains, and math-rendering pipelines that require standard entity vocabularies.
Related standards
- ISO 8879:1986 - SGML (reference baseline for markup rules).
- ISO 6937 - referenced character set structure used for organizing entities.
- ISO/IEC TR 9573 (other parts) - companion parts covering tutorials, public entity sets for other symbol groups and alphabets.
- MathSci / AMS mathfile - cited source identifiers for glyph depictions.
Keywords: ISO/IEC TR 9573-13:1991, SGML, public entity sets, mathematics and science, entity names, SDATA, display entity sets, character entity sets, ISO 8879, MathSci.