[osis-core] Element review: <back> (with reference to <body> and <front>

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 11:04:36 -0400

I realize that OSIS 1.1 is late in the development cycle, so 
feel free to ignore my remarks. 

There was a suggest a while back on this list to drop the <back>
<body> and <front> elements and just use <div>s with suitable types,
e.g. <div type="front">, <div type="Preface">, <div type="Colophon">, 
etc. Not a major issue, but I think there are good arugments for 
doing so.

First, it's not clear to me what you gain with these elements. 
Is it important for an analyst to be able to assert that a certain
section of a document (e.g. a preface) is really <front> and not 
<body>? If so, would it not suffice to use <div type="front">?
Is it important for a computer program processing the document
to know that?  I can't think of such situations.

Second, it adds a level of structure, which makes the document
harder to process, harder to write stylesheets for, etc. In particular,
using an editing program like OpenOffice Writer, deep structure
is the hardest part to do without major user interface modifications.

-Harry

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org
[mailto:owner-osis-core@bibletechnologieswg.org]On Behalf Of Patrick
Durusau
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 4:06 PM
To: osis-core
Subject: [osis-core] Element review: <back> (with reference to <body>
and <front>

Element review <back>:

<back> only contains <div> and <title> (optional).

Currently requires one <div> and I think that is probably the expected 
behavior.

Comments? Good to go on this one?

Note that <body> and <front> have the same model so I won't cover them 
separately.

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu