[osis-core] Comments on Req Working Draft 5 December 2001

[Robin Cover]

Thanks for your work, Patrick.  Herewith some responses to your
email message and (then) comments on particulars in the draft
itself.

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Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2001 09:53:47 -0500
From: Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>
Reply-To: osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
To: osis core <osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org>
Subject: [osis-core] Latest Revision

NOTE: We promised the public posting of this draft to the website by the 
end of this week. Please review and get back to me by Thursday. I am 
leaving Friday for the XML 2001 conference and will have limited time 
(read none at all!) to deal with changes or corrections. Thanks! Patrick

Greetings,

I had a delightful conversation with Kees this morning on the phone and 
have incorporated several of his suggestions in the latest draft. Some 
significant changes to note:

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1. Using the language "standard editions", understood to be modern 
editions of the biblical text. In order to get a useable but expandable 
work product out the door,  I think we need to focus on the standard 
editions and cover variants on those in a later release. No matter how 
many notes BHS and NA27 have, they remain just texts with notes. From a 
markup standpoint, it is not even a critical apparatus, just notes on a 
text. (I take a critical apparatus as allowing the automatic 
re-construction of base and witness texts, a far cry from BHS and NA27.)
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[Robin's comment]

With respect to:

(a) "OSIS 1.0 SHALL specify a standard for the authoring of
     standard editions of biblical texts

(b) the other prose under "Definition of Scope"

(c) the comment above in "1."


* Can you clarify the distinction (if one is intended) between the
(i) "authoring" of a document and (ii) the markup/encoding of an
extant [e.g., published in 1987] print edition of a bible?  The term
"authoring" seems not to envision the role of "(ii)" -- but I think
it should.  An argument might be made for primacy of support for
(i), but I think (ii) needs to be in the requirements document.

* Can you clarify in this context whether "authoring of standard
 editions" includes Bibles in ('original') Greek and Hebrew?

* I am confused by your comment "I think we need to focus on
  the standard editions and cover variants on those in a
  later release." in light of the text in 
  http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/08osis-requirements-20011205.html 
  viz., "Note.3 OSIS 1.0 MUST define the usage of notes as critical
  apparatus in a biblical text."   I wonder if I have (until now,
  and maybe also now) misunderstood the intent and meaning of the
  "Non-normative comment" following "Note.3".

  Here's my view:  OSIS ought be provide a means of encoding
  text critical information such as is printed in the text-critical
  notes/apparatus (whichever term one likes) at the bottom of the
  page, e.g., in NA26 and BHS.  One can construe the stuff at the
  bottom of the page as a "series of notes" and I have no objection to
  this view; in my copy of NA26, these notes are separated by solid
  dot (verse delimitation) and single vertical-bar (delimits variants
  within a verse); in my copy of BHS, successive TC notes are
  separated by double vertical-bar.  Whether one wants to call this
  material an "app crit" or "a series of TC notes" is immaterial to
  me.  The nature of the information is important, however; see
  further here...
  
  The comment above "No matter how many notes BHS and NA27 have,
  they remain just texts with notes. From a markup standpoint, it is
  not even a critical apparatus, just notes on a text." is
  puzzling.  It seems to possibly imply that the information in
  each note can be treated (using OSIS markup) as simply a
  string of characters.  Forgive me if this is not meant, but
  something like this seems to be implied, as the comment justifies
  the decision "I think we need to focus on the standard editions
  and cover variants on those in a later release."
  
  I assert that the individual notes in NA26 and BHS contain
  information -- revealed through punctuational and implicit
  markup -- that is in fact very structured.  This structure is
  what I assumed the OSIS *explicit* markup would support. After
  all, the whole markup enterprise is just that: markup
  delimiters and qualifiers which make explicit that which is
  implicit in the bare stream of visible (character) text. So
  in the case of NA26 and BHS text-critical notes, there is
  notionally in each case a lemma, a [chosen/extant] reading for
  the lemma, a list of witnesses attesting the lemma reading,
  and one or more variant readings, with one or more witness;
  alternatives (BHS) are also conjectured variants; the TC notes
  also sometimes provide explanatory information to help the
  reader account for the variant (haplography, dittography, etc)
  
  I think the OSIS model should provide a basic framework for
  explicitly encoding this text-critical information; I do not
  think TC notes represent simply "unstructured
  string/character text".  There are, of course, certain
  differences in supporting models for "encoding variation"
  and "marking up a printed app crit". I think OSIS needs
  something basic which will support the encoding of the
  information objects and information structure within any
  typical text-critical note.
  
2. By that narrowing of the focus, I have introduced several other 
changes: (I am not suggesting we not pursue these, some are my pets as 
well, but I  would like to get us a scope we can meet and do it well in 
the time available. I intend to pursue these other issues onward and 
will not simply declare victory as some text projects have done.)

Delete LTS 3, the images, graphics, video, etc. not really part of a 
standard edition.  Is important for children's bibles, illustrated 
bibles and the like, but we can add that in a separate module. I don't 
think we have to revisit the HyTime linking, etc. issues at this point.

3. Changed on LTS 3 (renumbered from 4)  that structures like a table of 
contents will be defined. From a markup standpoint it is really an 
artifact of the rendering process but I think Kees is  correct in 
thinking some publishers/authors will be happier with static structures 
here.

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4.  I have removed certainty and responsibility from the notes section. 
If we are authoring standard editions, there is really no question about 
certainty or responsiblity. Those can only arise when working with 
original witnesses. BHS and NA27 are reports about witnesses and hence 
there is no uncertainty about what they report. We may disagree with 
those sources but there is no doubt about what they say about a 
particular text or witness. To the extent they speak of a witness, it is 
a note.
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[Robin's comment]

I am sad to see the section "Note.3" on certainty and responsibility
dropped, and I think some history of discussion has been lost.  The
TEI chapter does not specifically relate to textual criticism, though
it could be applied to textual readings.  The notion of certainty
and responsibility is a general feature of markup theory, especially
as "markup" encodes analysis of any kind: identification of a speaker,
morphological parse code, syntactic parse code, discourse referent,
etc.  To the extent that we support analysis of the text [e.g., as
envisioned in the req for "word level annotation mechanisms"] we would
want IMO to support certainty and responsibility.  Why?  Every
act or gesture of "markup" represents a critical judgment and
declaration by the markup practitioner: it is a declaration or
predication of something based upon human judgment. This is
more obviously (and especially) relevant to 'analytical markup'. The
markup practitioner should be able to qualify that judgment by (1)
assigning a probability value to the assertion, and by (2)
"signing his name" to take responsibility for the critical
judgment reflected in the markup act.  That's the TEI background,
and I think the concept deserves to be retained in the OSIS model.


5.  I have dropped the open issues section as inappropriate to a 
requirements document. In particular take note that resolving multiple 
references is no longer a requirement for OSIS 1.0. Recall that I have 
suggested that the scope be limited to standard editions and that is not 
an issue for such texts. It is an issue I think we should address, just 
not in the OSIS 1.0 release. In that regard, note the editing of 
Reference 1.

I have deleted Reference 6 as being a duplicate of Reference 2.  If the 
document is required to declare a numbering scheme, OSIS will need to 
provide a mechanism for so doing. The resolution of that scheme against 
others is a topic for a later release.

Comments, suggestions,  corrections, additions, deletions are all welcome!

Patrick

Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu


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Other comments from Robin

1. [in the Overview:] "These requirements do not address the
   encoding of biblical materials such as commentaries..."
   

One wonders whether a typical "study Bible" is in view.  To my
mind, there is little difference structurally between a modest
study bible and a simple bible commentary.  I also admit that
my personal understanding, at the time of our Dallas
requirements meeting, was that the OSIS model would support
basic-level commentaries.  Many of the decisions I made at
the meetings were predicated on this very assumption.

2. Sub 3.Conformance

"requirements that must be meet..."  -->> met


3.  Section 7 - Phrase.1 OSIS 1.0 MUST declare elements for
    phrase structures such as, abbreviation, name, place,
    quote and similar elements.
    
I would recommend dropping 'quote' from the list because a
quote/quotation is often more substantial than a phrase.

In "name, place" do you mean "personal name, geographic name"
-- or to you mean 'name' and 'place' in the abstract?

4.  Sub section 8, Reference.5 OSIS 1.0 MUST declare a
mechanism for alignment of parallel passages.

Would it be better to say "of parallel texts" -- this would
support the notion of segmentation and alignment at a much
lower level than is typically understood by "passages". 
Interlinear bibles often want to do word level alignment, for
example.

5. Sub section 8, Non-normative comment...

"works as Biblia Hebraica Stutgartendia,"  should be

-->> Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia



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