[osis-core] Comments on Req Working Draft 5 December 2001
Patrick Durusau
osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
Thu, 06 Dec 2001 14:47:23 -0500
(Robin, and others, I will be re-drafting as indicated below, probably
this evening. Suggested language for Robin's changes or other problem
points is most welcome!)
Robin,
Thanks for the comments! Replies follow:
Robin Cover wrote:
>Thanks for your work, Patrick. Herewith some responses to your
>email message and (then) comments on particulars in the draft
>itself.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------
>
>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:
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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.)
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>[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.
>
I was trying to delimit the scope of our effort to include only modern
(20th century editions?) as opposed to older materials. I suspect that
OSIS 1.0 would be inadequate in a number of respects for someone
attempting to encode the Rabbinic Bible or manuscript witnesses. Not
that I don't think we should cover those as well, just not by early next
year.
I used the term "authoring" to indicate production of new editions but
your point is well taken. That is probably too strong a statement.
Can you suggest language that would delimit the scope to modern/standard
texts more clearly?
>* Can you clarify in this context whether "authoring of standard
> editions" includes Bibles in ('original') Greek and Hebrew?
>
Yes.
>
>* 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.
>
Yes, I was using the notion of critical apparatus more narrowly than is
commonly understood. Certainly we need to provide the structure
represented in the notes of NA26 and BHS.
When using the term critical apparatus I meant it more in the sense of
encoding variations in the TEI sense, which in the best practice (IMHO),
allows the reconstruction of the witness from that encoding.
When I refer to encoding variants, it was in the sense of markup of a
manuscript witness, not a critical edition such as NA26 or BHS.
Suggested language? (I will try to parse something out this afternoon
that catches the point you are making, with which I fully agree.)
>
>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.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>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.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>[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.
>
Point taken. Sorry, I was thinking in terms of manuscript witnesses
again! We do have the metadata about who has changed the content of any
element. This will be added back into the text.
>
>
>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
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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.
>
I did not mean to imply that we would drop commentaries altogether. Most
of these changes were an effort to map a small enough portion of the
universe of biblical texts to allow us to produce at least the OSIS 1.0
draft specification in a relatively finite amount of time. It may well
be the case that I am over estimating the difficulty of including
basic-level commentaries.
Since this is being published as a draft, and not definitive version,
would it be acceptable to indicate that we are studying the question of
including study bibles and lay commentaries for inclusion, pending the
results of our analysis of standard/modern bibles and the resources we
have to bring to bear?
>
>2. Sub 3.Conformance
>
>"requirements that must be meet..." -->> met
>
Thanks!
>
>
>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.
>
Agreed.
>
>In "name, place" do you mean "personal name, geographic name"
>-- or to you mean 'name' and 'place' in the abstract?
>
This was meant as illustration and not the more specific "personal name"
or "geographic name", more along the lines of structures commonly
thought to be shorter than a sentence.
>
>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.
>
Agreed.
>
>5. Sub section 8, Non-normative comment...
>
>"works as Biblia Hebraica Stutgartendia," should be
>
>-->> Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
>
Thanks!
Much appreciated Robin!
Alan Conner has confirmed that we can meet at SIL, 24 - 27th of January
2002! He will get housing for us as soon as we can supply names and
arrival dates!
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu