Since 2015, a working group composed of scholars and experts from both mainland China and Taiwan has been submitting proposals for the encoding of small seal script from Shuowen Jiezi to ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. To advance the work of encoding the small seal script into Information Technology Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS, ISO/IEC 10646), it is necessary to conduct an Ideographic Description Sequence (IDS) analysis of these small seal script. This paper, based on the theories of “Shuowen” studies and Chinese character Structure studies, proposes two methods for the IDS analysis of small seal script from “Shuowen”. ⑴ The rationale-based IDS analysis refers to analyzing the direct components of small seal character according to the structural meaning as explained in Shuowen, and then describing the IDS based on the planar positional relationships of the direct components. ⑵ The form-based IDS analysis refers to analyzing the basic components of small seal character according to the natural segmentation and then descrbing the planar positional relationships of the basic components. With these two methods, both the structural meaning and the form information of the small seal script are preserved. Detailed rules of the two analysisi methods are also designed to ensure the consistency of IDS analysis and description of “Shuowen” small seal script. This work could also provide a reference for the information processing of other ancient scripts.

The research platform of digitized ancient Chinese stele inscriptions has four functions: ⑴ the digitized collection and management of stele rubbings, ⑵ the textualization of stele inscriptions and the full‐text retrieval, ⑶ the detailed description of stele attributes and the stele retrieval based on the attributes, ⑷ the collection of Chinese glyph pictures from stele inscriptions and the single glyph retrieval. There are four kinds of digitized resources stored in the platform: ⑴ the scanned pictures of stele rubbings, ⑵ the text of stele inscriptions, ⑶ the attributes of steles, like their times, sites, sizes, owners, calligraphers and so on, ⑷ the single Chinese glyph pictures of stele inscriptions.  All those works can be performed on the research platform. Workers should log in the platform with given name and password at first. Then they can set storing directories of digitized resources, upload scanning pictures of stele rubbings, type‐in texts of stele inscriptions, mark stele attributes, pick up single Chinese glyphs from steles and classified them with abstract characters into three layers (Ziyang, Ziwei, Zizhong, which are terms in Chinese Ideography. 淚 and 泪 belong to the same Zizhong because they were used to record the same word “tear” in Chinese. 群 and 羣 belong to the same Ziwei because they have the same structure meaning but different writings. Two glyphs, only used to record the same word and have the same writing, belong to the same Ziyang).  After all the digitized works, a guest can access those stored resources through three kinds of retrievals: ⑴ Find steles of certain dynasty which contain specified content in their names, ⑵ Find steles of certain dynasty which contain specified text in their inscriptions, ⑶ Find Chinese glyphs of a specified character appeared in stele inscriptions of a certain dynasty stored in the platform.