Maschinenschrift Open standard for the self-declaration of language-substrate-mediated literature.

Specifications

This page collects the technical specifications that are binding for a spec-conformant implementation of the Maschinenschrift seal and its axis semantics.

Current spec

  • Siegel-Spec v8 — geometry and rendering rules of the seal SVG. As of 2026-08-24. Current canonical version. Axis vocabulary W/G/B (Wortlaut / Geist / Beleg), glossed Wording, Geist, Record. The B-axis records whether the work’s factual statements were checked against sources outside the substrate.

Superseded versions

  • Siegel-Spec v7 — frozen historical record. Same geometry, same letters, same values as v8; the B-axis notated bibliographic findability instead. A belegt under v7 is not a belegt under v8.
  • Siegel-Spec v6 — frozen historical record. Same geometry as v8; axis vocabulary D/G/K (Diktion / Geist / Korrespondenz). Numeric W and G values are identical to v8.
  • Siegel-Spec v5 — frozen historical record. Same geometry as v8; axis vocabulary F/S/V (Form / Substance / Verification) with binary values verified / unverified.
  • Foundation — linguistic basis and axis semantics (W, G, B). Non-technical, but precedes every spec implementation.
  • Submission — how a work enters the catalog: by email, on self-declaration. The data-layer keys (wortlaut, geist, beleg) are defined in Foundation §9.

Version discipline

Changes to a spec happen exclusively against a new version number. A published spec version remains reachable at its URL.

The historical predecessors of the current seal spec (v1–v4) are not publicly published. Their differences from v5 through v8 are summarized in the version history of the v8 page.

Implementations

The reference implementation of the seal generator is written in Python and found in the site repository under siegel-generator/src/siegel.py. A spec-identical JavaScript implementation for client-side live preview lives under static/js/live-preview.js.

Implementations in other languages are welcome. A correctly implemented variant must reproduce the three canonical states from Spec v8 byte-for-byte.