[osis-core] Latest Core Draft!
Patrick Durusau
osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
Thu, 08 Nov 2001 16:51:14 -0500
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Greetings,
Thanks to Jonathan Robie for driving to Covington after a presentation
in Atlanta earlier today! We spent an hour in a local eatery going over
the latest draft of the OSIS Core requirements draft and Jonathan had
lots of helpful suggestions and comments about making it more of a
standard requirements document.
Jerry is pressing to have the requirements document to them by Saturday
(that is day after tomorrow) for duplication for inclusion in the OSIS
meeting folders.
Comments, via email or phone should reach me sometime tomorrow to be
included in this draft.
http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/osis-requirements.html
username: osis
password: osisxsem
I have also attached it just in case anyone wants to save it and read it
off-line.
Thanks!
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu
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<h1>OSIS Requirements<br>
</h1>
<h2>BTWG Working Draft 8 November 2001</h2>
<dl>
<dt>This version:</dt>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/04osis-requirements-20011108.html">http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/04osis-requirements-20011108.html</a>
<br>
</dd>
<dt>Latest version:</dt>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/osis-requirements.html">http://www.sbl-site.org/osis/osis-requirements.html</a>
<br>
</dd>
<dt>Previous versions:</dt>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/03osis-requirements-20011106.html">
http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/03osis-requirements-20011106.html</a>
<br>
</dd>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/02osis-requirements-20011102.html">
http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/02osis-requirements-20011102.html</a>
<br>
</dd>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/01osis-requirements-20011020.html">
http://www.sbl-site2.org/osis/01osis-requirements-20011020.html</a>
</dd>
<dt>Editors:</dt>
<dd>
Steve DeRose
(Brown University) <a href="mailto:Steven_DeRose@Brown.edu"><Steven_DeRose@Brown.edu></a><br>
Robin Cover (ISOGEN) <a href="mailto:robin@isogen.com"><robin@isogen.com></a><br>
Troy Griffiths (Crosswire) <a href="mailto:scribe@crosswire.org"><scribe@crosswire.org></a><br>
Jerry Fincher <a href="mailto:dandjfincher@juno.com"><dandjfincher@juno.com></a><br>
Patrick Durusau (Society of Biblical Literature) <a href="mailto:pdurusau@emory.edu"><pdurusau@emory.edu></a><br>
</dd>
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<hr title="Separator for header">
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<h2>
<a name="abstract">Abstract</a>
</h2>
<p>This document describes the requirements for the Open Scriptural Information Standard (OSIS) 1.0 specification.</p>
<h2>
<a name="status">Status of this document</a>
</h2>
<p>This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. This document is the first public OSIS Requirements working draft.</p>
<p>This is a working draft for review by participants in the Bible Technology Working Group and other interested parties. It is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or made obsolete by other documents at any time. This document should only be cited as a "work in progress".</p>
<p>Comments on this document should be sent to the editors or to the (insert list name).</p>
<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
1 <a href="#section-Overview">Overview</a><br>
2 <a href="#section-Terminology">Terminology</a><br>
3 <a href="#section-General-Requirements">General Requirements</a><br>
4 <a href="#section-Metadata-Requirements">Metadata Requirements</a><br>
5 <a href="#section-LTS-Requirements">Large Text Structure Requirements</a><br>
6 <a href="#section-Notes-Requirements">Notes and Annotation Requirements</a><br>
7 <a href="#section-Pharse-Requirements">Phrase Level Requirements</a><br>
8 <a href="#section-Reference-Requirements">Reference/Linking Requirements</a><br>
<a name="section-Overview"></a><h2>1. Overview</h2>
<p>This document contains the requirements for the Open Scriptural Information Standard (OSIS) under development by the Bible Technology Working Group (BTWG). OSIS 1.0 is a base encoding that is primarily intended for common and study bible editions as well as lay commentaries. It is the goal of the BTWG to produce subsequent editions of the OSIS standard that will leverage upon mechanisms implemented in OSIS 1.0 to extend this encoding standard to more complex texts.
</p>
<p>The purpose of this requirements document is to chart the scope of OSIS 1.0 to allow evaluation of that scope by the user community to make sure all the relevant requirements have been identified. It is hoped that the user community will use this document as a framework for their suggestions, criticisms or additions to the requirements for OSIS 1.0.
</p>
<p>To the extent possible, the use of markup syntax has been avoided in this document except where necessary to make reference to such syntax for purposes of illustration. Readers, critics and commentators should feel free to contribute their remarks using any means of expression or illustration they find helpful. It would be most helpful, however, if such comments were directed at specific portions of this requirements document by section number, to assist the editors in collating and evaluating responses.
</p>
<p>The editors relied heavily upon prior work on biblical texts, most notably by Logos Research Systems, SIL International (XSEM and Dennis Drescher) and ThML (Harry Plantinga) in their analysis of the requirements for OSIS 1.0. The degree to which the editors have been successful in isolating fundamental requirements for encoding biblical texts, credit should be given to our predecessors. Any shortcomings or gaps in the following requirements should be credited to the editors and not the materials used as their starting point.
</p>
<p>The goal of OSIS 1.0 is to specify a basic XML format for common and study bible editions as well as lay commentaries. That format will form the basis for later additions to OSIS 1.0 to enable the encoding of more complex texts and commentaries.</p>
<h2>
<a name="section-Terminology"></a>2. Terminology</h2>
<p> The following key words are used throughout the document to specify
the extent to which an item is a requirement for the work of the Bible Technology
Working Group:</p>
<dl>
<dt>
<b><a name="terminology-must"></a>MUST</b>
</dt>
<dd>
<p>This word means that the item is an absolute requirement.</p>
</dd>
<dt>
<b><a name="terminology-should"></a> SHOULD</b>
</dt>
<dd>
<p>This word means that there may exist valid reasons not to
treat this item as a requirement, but the full implications should be
understood and the case carefully weighed before discarding this item.</p>
</dd>
<dt>
<b><a name="terminology-may"></a> MAY</b>
</dt>
<dd>
<p>This word means that an item deserves attention, but further
study is needed to determine whether the item should be treated as a
requirement.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<p>When written in all CAPS, MUST, SHOULD and MAY, have the specific meaning assigned above. If written in normal case, they have their usual non-technical meaning.</p>
<a name="section-General-Requirements"></a><h2>3. General Requirements</h2>
<h4>General Syntax</h4>
<p>Must Use the XML "Family" of Standards</p>
<h4>Expression of OSIS</h4>
<p>The vocabulary and structures of OSIS MUST be expressed in DTD, XML Schema, Relax NG syntax but not limited by features peculiar to any expression language.</p>
<h4>Ontologies</h4>
<p>OSIS 1.0 MUST provide a mechanism for declaring XML vocabularies for ontologies.</p>
<h4>Definition of Scope</h4>
<p>The genre of texts covered by this release are: common and study bibles and lay commentarires.</p>
<h4>SGML Compatibility</h4>
<p>Compatibility with SGML is not a priority.</p>
<a name="#section-Metadata-Requirements"></a><h2>4. Metadata Requirements</h2>
<p>The division of requirements that follows is upon the experience of the editors with encoding texts and is meant simply to orient the reader familiar with that realm of discourse. No significance should be attached to a particular requirement appearing in one section or another (experts will differ on their classification).</p>
<p>Metadata in this context should be understood as information about a particular text in its most general sense. For example, to say that the King James Version was published in England is a partial description of a particular text, versus "In the beginning, ..." is part of the text being described. It is the description of the text in its largest sense that the following requirements are meant to address.</p>
<p>In this document the term "metadata" does not refer to declarations in XML Schemas.</p>
<p><b>Metadata.1</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST include Dublin Core metadata.</p>
<p>The metadata specified by Dublin Core falls into categories of Content (Title, Subject, Description, Type, Source, Relation, Coverage), Intellectual Property (Creator, Publisher, Contributor, Rights) and, Instantiation (Date, Format, Identifier, Language). For current information see: <a class="ref" href="">http://dublincore.org/</a>.
</p>
<p><b>Metadata.2</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST include mechanisms for recording library classification data such as Library of Congress, Dewey or other publication or cataloging data.
</p>
<p><b>Metadata.3</b> Within OSIS 1.0 all metadata MUST be inherited by elements in a document instance unless over-ridden at a lower element level.
</p>
<p><b>Metadata.4</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST provide mechanisms to include metadata on any element.
</p>
<p>This requirement addresses the need to include metadata that may be at variance with that recorded for the document instance as a whole. One possible use would be to indicate revision or authoring information on a particular paragraph or section of a larger work.
</p>
<p><b>Metadata.5</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST provide a mechanism for identification of the versification of a biblical text.
</p>
<p>The existence of divergent versification schemes for biblical texts merit special attention in the OSIS standard. To permit automatic alignment and searching of texts, it will be necessary that a standard set of versification identifiers be developed by the BTWG which may be mapped to various other versification schemes.
</p>
<p><b>Metadata.6</b> OSIS 1.0 metadata MUST include specific mechanisms for addressing digital rights management and confidentiality.</p>
<p>Digital rights management is an important issue for both publishers and software vendors. A working group will be given the task of evaluating the various DRM (digital rights management) mechanisms that are available for inclusion in metadata and charged with making a recommendation for inclusion into the OSIS 1.0 metadata mechanism. This is an illustration of an area where the BTWG does not intend to re-create the work of other more focused and technically competent groups addressing this issue.</p>
<p><b>Metadata.7</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST include metadata for elements that includes certainty and responsiblity as currently modeled in the TEI Guidelines.</p>
<p>Texts that represent translations or commentaries on biblical texts often need to include information about the reading of primary materials as well as the person responsible for that reading. This is one mechanism for recording that information that appears in OSIS 1.0. More sophisticated mechanisms will be the subject of later versions of the OSIS standard.</p>
<p>There are several types of bible specific metadata or at least data that is most often of concern for people who use, publish biblcal texts that are not specifically mentioned above. Those would include metadata about translators, translations, versions, version abbreviations, and language usage. All of those items are actually subsumed under the more general categories of Dublin Core metadata but are listed here to assure readers such items have not been overlooked.</p>
<a name="section-LTS-Requirements"></a><h2>5. Large Text Structure Requirements</h2>
<p>While boundaries of what constitutes a "large text structure" varies from person to person, the term is used here to simply delimit the requirements for such structures as opposed to smaller structures in a text. No conclusion should be drawn from the listing of a structure within this category as opposed to the following <a href="#section-Notes-Requirements">Notes and Annotations</a> or <a href="#section-Phrase-Requirements">Phrase Level Structures</a> sections.
</p>
<p><b>LTS.1</b> DIV structures within OSIS 1.0 must allow document divisions such as book, chapter, or more finely grained divisions. Such structures may, but are not required to correspond to traditional divisions of the text.</p>
<p>The divorce of DIVs from traditional structures avoids problems of referencing other structures that do not correspond to traditional divisions. This will not impair the ability of software (or presentation in print) to use such traditional structures for display or printing.</p>
<p><b>LTS.2</b> Users, readers and producers of texts in non-English languages MUST have the ability to use element names and attributes in their native languages.</p>
<p><b>LTS.3</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST define the use of opening and closing milestones to mark structures that do not properly <b>nest</b> in the sense of a well-formed XML document.
</p>
<p>Structures under consideration for markup with milestones include (but are not limited to) page, book, chapter, verse, quote, line, a semi-open set.
</p>
<p><b>LTS.4</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST define a mechanism for elements are required to insert illustrations (children's bibles for instance) or other material that is not strictly speaking a part of the normal flow of elements.</p>
<p><b>LTS.5</b> OSIS 1.0 SHOULD define default structures for common divisions of printed texts, including such structures as title page, front, body, back, as well as place holders for generated text objects such as a table of contents, index, table of illustrations, etc.</p>
<p>OSIS 1.0 is not being designed in isolation and there are a number of presentation and printing practices that will find expression in specific mechanisms in OSIS 1.0. The purpose of this standard is to achieve a common format for text creation and interchange that will serve a number of diverse communities. Every effort will be made to make use of the standard as intuiative as possible and changing the expected semantics of text structure names, for example, will be avoided.</p>
<a name="section-Notes-Requirements"></a><h2>6. Notes and Annotation Requirements</h2>
<p><b>Note.1</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST provide a mechanism for the imposition of an editorial apparatus upon a text.</p>
<p><b>Note.2</b> The editorial apparatus MUST allow attachment of an annotation to any portion of text in the document instance.</p>
<p>Annotation is used to mean every sort of annotation on a text, ranging from philological notes (some translations read, etc.) to longer discursive material that may provide longer explanations of material in the text.</p>
<p><b>Note.3</b> OSIS 1.0 SHOULD define the usage of notes for critical apparatus in a biblical text.</p>
<p>A critical apparatus is merely a specialized expression of the more general concept of a note. Given its importance in biblical studies and the more common view that critical apparatus is something different from a mere note, the drafters wished to indicate that it has not been overlooked.</p>
<p><b>Note.4</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare a mechanism for alignment of parallel passages.
</p>
<a name="section-Pharse-Requirements"></a><h2>7. Phrase Level Requirements</h2>
<p>All markup can be reduced to a series of <seg> elements with appropriate attributes. Parsers and software work as easily with text encoded in that manner as with more human readable encoding. However, one of the implicit goals of OSIS is to ease the authoring of biblical texts by human authors, some of whom will lack software beyond simple text editors. Therefore, a number of phrase level elements are declared that correspond to commonly recognized structures in biblical texts. The element set is constructed to provide an intuitive set of elements that can be easily used by human authors. No implication should be drawn from these elements as to the eventual processing, storage or manipulation of the text by more sophisticated applications.</p>
<p><b>Phrase.1</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare elements for phrase structures such as, abbr, blockquote and similar elements.</p>
<p><b>Phrase.2</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare word level annotation mechanisms, apart from both notes and reference/linking.</p>
<p>Word level annotation is of such importance in biblical studies, software and publishing that it will be treated separately from both notes and reference/annotation. It could actually be treated as part of either but the OSIS developers want to create easy to use mechanisms that will work across texts and with the minimal skill set needed to create such annotations.</p>
<p><b>Phrase.3</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare a reference scheme for both part-of-speech (POS) and LEMMA for words found in a biblical text. Alternative schemes will be allowed, but must be in addition to the normative OSIS reference.
</p>
<a name="section-Reference-Requirements"></a><h2>8. Reference/Linking Requirements</h2>
<p><b>Reference.1</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare robust pointing and linking mechanisms for biblical references.</p>
<p><b>Reference.2</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST require the declaration of a numbering scheme for references to biblical texts. All subsequent references must either declare a referencing system or default to the one declared for the document as a whole.</p>
<p><b>Reference.3</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare an OSIS namespace for all OSIS references.
</p>
<p><b>Reference.4</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare a syntax for the three uses of reference: point here (location identifier), relevant material here (location plus subject), and, relevant material there (other location relevant here).</p>
<p><b>Reference.5</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST provide for both inline and out-of-link linking of texts.</p>
<p><b>Reference.6</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare a keyword syntax for use in construction of indexes and other finding aids (with associated metadata).</p>
<p><b>Reference.7</b> OSIS 1.0 MUST declare both basic and extended mechanims for bibliographic references.</p>
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