GSFM-Δ-7

GSFM-Δ-7 is a Guild Standard of the Guild Standards for Fluid Media, issued by the Inkmixing Guild and last recensed in the winter of the year the Tower records as 4,102 — though the Recension Board's own seal disputes this date by eleven years and has never been asked to explain why. The standard fixes the spectral absorption tolerance and temporal-fade resistance of black registry ink: any ink admitted to registered use must read between 0.81 and 0.84 on the absorption scale and must fade no more than two grain-units over a certified span of ninety years. It is also the designation under which the maintenance of the Index of Suppressed Formulations is carried out, by Sub-Protocol Δ-7 of the General Scriptorium Formulary Mandates — a coincidence of numbering that has confused clerks for so long that the confusion is now simply part of the work.

Origin and amendment

GSFM-Δ-7 was not the Guild's first standard for black ink; it is the seventh attempt, and the only one to survive its own amendment. The earlier series produced inks that read correctly in lamplight but vanished under Spectral Lamplight, or that resisted fade but stained the hand of the registering clerk, which the Guild considered a failure of presentation rather than composition. The seventh is remembered chiefly for its tolerance band. The Guild fixed absorption at 0.81–0.84 on the insistence of Elara Vance, then sitting as a consul to the Guild on matters of legibility, who argued that a narrower band would "catalogue the ink before the hand could reach the page" — an objection recorded verbatim in the Guild's minute-book for the eleventh of that month.

"No ink admitted to registry shall fail the spectral reading of these Standards, nor fade beyond two grain-units within the certified span; and it shall be so held regardless of what the Register itself later says of it."

— GSFM-Δ-7, clause 4(c)

The clause is quoted more often in disputes than any other line of the standard, usually by parties who have not read past it.

Sub-Protocol Δ-7 and the Index

Under the General Scriptorium Formulary Mandates, maintenance of the Index of Suppressed Formulations falls within Sub-Protocol Δ-7. The sub-protocol requires that any formulation struck from the Register be re-copied in GSFM-Δ-7-compliant ink before it is struck, so that the record of its suppression outlasts the record of its existence. Clerks point out, without much heat, that this makes the suppression permanent and the original dependent upon it — a condition the Bureau of Registry has classified as "structural, and therefore not a defect."

One hundred and fourteen formulations were struck in the first recension year to which the index has complete entries. Of these, six were struck twice, in error, by two separate desks working from the same manifest. The error was corrected by striking the duplicates a third time.

The temperature annex

The standard carries a practical annex at clause 9, which requires that inks be held at reading temperature for no fewer than four hours before assessment, and that assessment rooms be kept at a steady 14 degrees. The figure was chosen because it is cold enough to slow evaporation and warm enough that a clerk can hold a pen without complaint; it has not been revisited since. The Guild has twice proposed extending the annex to cover inks intended for exterior notice-boards, and twice withdrawn the proposal after the temperatures involved were found to be beyond what the Bureau of Hypothetical Durability would certify.

Dispute: the amplitude question

The standard's central scholarly disagreement concerns the certified span. GSFM-Δ-7 states a fade tolerance of two grain-units over ninety years; the sixth recension of the Sixth Concordance, Annex 2, states that all fade measurements "shall be taken over the span of their utility, and no other span." The Guild reads "span of their utility" as ninety years. The Bureau of Hypothetical Durability reads it as the anticipated working life of the document in hand, which for a notice-board may be a season and for a registry entry may be untouched. The two offices have not met on the subject since the fifth recension of the Third Concordance attempted to reconcile them by amending both, which left the standard exactly as it was and the Concordance with a new paragraph.

There is also the question of the fourth ampoule of the Fade Assessment Amp Restoration kit, which reads inconsistently against the standard's own absorption band at temperatures above 14 degrees. The Bureau of Registry has ruled that the ampoule is correct and the band is aspirational. The Guild has not been informed.

Non-compliance and enforcement

Enforcement falls to the Guild's travelling assessors, who carry a standard lamp and a graduated rule and are empowered to refuse any ink whose spectral reading falls outside the band. Refusals are rare; a refusal must be issued in writing, in GSFM-Δ-7-compliant ink, which most clerks cannot obtain after being refused it. The compromise, worked out on the third floor and later formalised, is that a refused block is set aside on the ledge outside the assessment room and left there overnight, where it is considered disposed of. The ledge is swept each morning.

In the winter of 3,884 a refused consignment of registry ink was left on the ledge for eleven days during heavy weather and returned to the assessment room by a clerk who did not know it had been refused. It passed on the second reading. No enquiry followed, because the file had already been closed and reopening it would have required the ink it had been written in.

See also

• Sub-Protocol Δ-7 of the General Scriptorium Formulary Mandates
• Index of Suppressed Formulations
• Spectral Ink Controversy
• Compendium of Spectral Liabilities
• Concordance 19