[osis-core] reference systems: Issue 1

[Harry Plantinga]

> ISSUES:
> 1) In the above examples I used Bible.French to imply that a 
> French reference system is in use.  I did not use FrenchBible 
> without a "." because I was trying to imply that they are 
> works from the same type (Bibles).  To me this means that 
> there must be a mapping between the Bible.French general 
> reference system and the Bible general reference system.  The 
> trouble I am having is that when I see 
> Bible.NIV.1993.en:Ps.45.3 I assume that I can "fall back" to 
> Bible and still use the Ps.45.3 without having to worry about 
> mapping.  However, Bible.French:Ps.44.3 is equivalent to 
> Bible:Ps.45.3.  In some cases we seem to mean that the 
> identifier to the right of the ":" could be used with any 
> level of "granularity" of the identifier to the left of the 
> ":".  (When we say Bible.NIV.1993.en:Ps.45.3 we could fall 
> back to Bible.NIV:Ps.45.3 or Bible:Ps.45.3 or Bible.NIV.1993:Ps.45.3.)
> 
> It also seems that Bible.NIV.1993.en:Ps.45.3 and 
> Bible.NIV.1993.fr:Ps.45.3 could both fall back to 
> Bible.NIV.1993:45.3 and mean the same thing.
> 
> This seems like the biggest problem that is not yet solved 
> with this strategy.
> 
> Summary of problem: We don't know when we can fall back based 
> on the "namespace" identifier and still use the identifier to 
> the left of the ":" and when mapping is required because we 
> have moved between reference systems.
> 
> The only way I see to solve this problem is to define that 
> the identifier to the left of the ":" is valid WITHOUT 
> mapping for all "fall back" levels for the "namespace".  AND 
> force a DIFFERENT top level identifier for cases where such 
> fall back is not possible.  This would force to editions 
> (even in the same language) that have different reference 
> systems to have a different top level "namespace" identifier. 
> Bible.NIV.1993.en:Ps.45.3 and BibleFrench.NIV.1993.en:Ps.44.3 
> would be references two different editions  of the same 
> translation that differ only by the reference system.
> 
> Solutions?

Let's see if I can restate the problem. I have defined myNIV to
refer to Bible.NIV.1993.en.  Now I want to use references like 
myNIV:Ps.45.3.  That seems well-defined; they are really references
to Bible.NIV.1993.en.  I don't see where fallback would occur.

Let's suppose I want to refer to that version with the Bible:
reference system.  I would define

<work workID="LSV">
  <identifier type="OSIS">Bible.French</identifier>
  <refSystem>Bible</refSystem>
</work>

LSV:Ps.44.3

Still no problem.  Since "Bible.French" starts with "Bible", it is
required that a transformation between Bible.French and Bible will
exist.

I guess I don't see the problem?

-Harry