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Below is reproduced the beginning of line 1 of the Santiago Staff.

I1
	602s?-999-90.76-12.76-606?-   64.700.71- 600-   22f.76-93?-  45-90.76-    175-  2- 2- 2-
	20.10- 522f.76-   27V-  48-90.76-    755-  509a-  604.76-       22h-532a-  700-76-  320.71-

In the leftmost column, Barthel's single-letter code for the item, here I (Santiago Staff), and the line shown (here line 1).

The hieroglyphic text fills most of the remaining space, with, underneath each line of signs, a ruler to help refer to the individual signs, and their alphanumerical transliteration in Barthel's system, as provided by the C.E.I.P.P. (Cercle d'Etudes sur l'Ile de Pâques et la Polynésie).

Because the lines are often very long (900mm for Tablet Tahua, 1200mm for the Santiago Staff), they had to be broken up in Barthel's original publication. Even so, Barthel's "sublines" were too wide to fit on a screen, and they had to be split. The original breaks in Barthel are signalled here by the small numbers, white on black, between the signs (cf. position 215), so that visitors with access to Barthel's 1958 Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift may easily locate the relevant parts.

By a stroke of sheer good luck, the markings on the ruler happen to correspond fairly closely to distances expressed in millimetres.

Beneath the ruler, the C.E.I.P.P.'s transliteration (see transliteration system). This interlinear arrangement makes it easy to spot mistakes. Note that this transliteration is out-of-date, as the verification process being carried out by the C.E.I.P.P. was only half-way through when rongorongo.org was created.

These pages were partly computer-generated. One program split the scans, and generated each page, inserting the rulers, and taking an educated guess at what segments of the transliteration should go where. The placement of the transliteration was then checked by hand and corrected when necessary. A second and last program then inserted hard spaces so that the transliterations of the individual signs would appear, roughly, under the relevant sign. As you can see, the results are far from satisfactory. In a very few cases it was necessary to alter the font size manually as the transliteration would not fit under the hieroglyphic text.