<html><body><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Dear friends and CrossWire colleagues</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">This is to inform you that Chris Little , one of the earliest CrossWire contributors and team members has passed away aged only 47, leaving behind his widow Michelle and two young sons.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Troy will be able to tell us exactly when Cheis joined but it was I think early, very early, in the 1990s. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">When I joined in 2004 Chris was the highly experienced, sometimes a bit surly and intimidating, always exceedingly thorough but ultimately supremely supportive and helpful module master. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">He had single-handedly moved our module base from the usual and common at that time for Bible software projects with a haphazard standard of textual encoding, shoddy copyright policies and careless copying between projects to the highest standards deserving of the divine texts we were trying to share and facilitate to be studied. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Much of what makes CrossWire modules and software even today still special was based on or made real by Chris’ work and contribution - starting with OSIS XML itself, our main encoding standard, for which he was a key contributor, moving across our copyright policies, our many versification systems, canons and book orders, and the ability to bridge and jump between such versifications easily. A lot of this started with careful and incredibly detailed work by Chris who assessed the landscape and laid foundations which have lasted through several decades - something quite uncommon in software matters. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">I had many exchanges with Chris, sometimes and particularly at the beginning of my own time contributing I was bitterly frustrated by his detailed and relentless approach , which contrasted seemingly sharply with my own desire to see things done. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Sometimes I became exasperated by his to me seemingly abrasive tone - but increasingly I started to seek him out and learned that his counsel was kind, wise and solid and his decisions at many places the exact needed and only way to do justice to the texts we wanted to share and the Lord we wanted to serve. And he was kind, very kind, even though one could easily miss that behind his technical detail, his strongly expressed views and his sometimes unsparing sarcasm. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">When Chris left the project some ten years ago he left behind a huge hole. He had newly married, had a very young son and was finishing his PhD</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">He has left now a much much larger hole.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Rest in Peace, Chris </div>
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