[osis-core] references and self-ids Part 3 - Proposal

[Harry Plantinga]

> > >3) I would like to propose that grain exist as an option for all
> > >references AND self-ids.
> > 
> > Why for self-ids? So far, grain has by definition meant a
> > machine-processable pointer of finer granularity than identifiers
> > could express. Surely it wouldn't make sense to tag points in the
> > text as being "5 code points into the verse" or "the first match of
> > 'the' in the verse", would it? What sort of cases do you have in mind?
> 
> The primary case is when a verse is segmented.  If a verse is split into
> three pieces for example they should each have a unique id.  In the
> examples of Matt.13 I have adopted a convention of having the first
> piece carry the non-grain adorned reference (osisID="Matt.13.14").  The
> second verse piece would have an id that includes a grain of some form
> (osisID=Matt.13.14@char:44(This)).  Naturally the next and prev
> attributes would then include the appropriate and unique identifiers.
> This convention provides a reliable mechanism to match up the pieces of
> a segmented verse and also allows for the location of the start of the
> verse by the non-grain adorned identifier.  

Couldn't the software compute this, just by adding up the code points
of the previous segments? What information is gained by adding @char:44?
If the verse segment has a new osisID, that could be specified, but if
it has the same osisID as the last segment, I don't see why you'd need
to add any osisID at all.

-Harry