[osis-core] reference systems: my thoughts - issues

[Todd Tillinghast]

> 
> Todd,
> 
> Let me take a stab at answering your issues (although I think others
> have done a better job than I will probably do here).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >
> > QUESTION:
> > 1) Is the workID attribute in <work> supposed to act as an alias
when
> > forming a reference?
> >
> > 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.)
> >
> 
> 
> The crux of the problem is the assumption that the "fall back" problem
> can be solved as a matter of syntax. That would be the case if there
was
> a universal mapping system to which any know bible reference could be
> mapped, sort of like a BPS (Biblical Positioning System) that any
other
> reference could be translated to and from.
> 
> The ability of software, Logos for example, to "fall back" has nothing
> to do with the syntax they have used for markup and a great deal to do
> with their mapping tables between completely inconsistent numbering
and
> versification systems.
> 
> The "fall back" that you propose would work only with software that
> presupposed the KJV (or other, take your pick) system as being the
> system to which it should "fall back." Would get some fairly odd
results
> if you used the Hungarian Bible for example as the "fall back" system.
> Even though that would work for most Bible references, as Harry has
> pointed out, there are very few other texts that have multiple
reference
> system and I suspect (personal opinion) that it is easier to simply
> create a mapping table of uniform syntax as part of the OSIS project
> than to solve this problem in syntax.
> 

I suppose that is the proposal.  Create "Bible" that would be basically
the KJV reference system.  And for all works that work precisely with
that reference systems then there is no mapping required.  When a work
falls into this category then it is named Bible.niv if the NIV adopts
the Bible set of identifiers.  And if the NIV does not adopt the Bible
set of identifiers then Bible.NIV and ALL identifiers would have to go
through a transformation to get back to Bible.  And if all NIV editions
exactly share the same set of identifier then Bible.NIV.en would need no
transformation to get to Bible.NIV or to Bible.NIV.sp. 

 <snip>

Todd