[osis-core] terms, definitions

[Harry Plantinga]

> >  5. identifying a part of a document as terms and definitions/dictionary
> >     entries/etc.
> >
> Hmmm, <list> with <label> and <item> are not sufficient? (Real question
> because that is how I would do terms or a simple glossary. Dictionary
> entries, in the sense of real dictionaries,  are much more complex than
> could be handled with <list>.)

I'm thinking of bible software, which typically supports several different
types of documents, e.g. bibles, commentaries, topical references,
monographs.
Each has to be indexed in a certain way.  Bibles have to have <verse> for
every verse; commentaries have to have <div outCite="..." type="Commentary">
on every block of commentary.  Maybe dictionaries and encyclopedias should
use <label type="term"> and <item type="def"> for each entry, so when
I add an OSIS dictionary to my bible software, my software knows how to
see if there is a definition of "apotheosis" in it.  The type attribute
is necessary because there may be lists within dictionary entries, for
example.

What I was trying to avoid is having one software project use <label> and
<item>, another use <div type="definition"><title>..</title><p>...</p></div>
or whatever. It would be helpful if there were standard markup
recommendations
for such standard types of documents.

One possible way of handling terms and definitions or dictionary entries,
as you suggest, would be to recommend in the documentation that you should
use <label type="term"> and <item type="def">.  But then the type attribute
is "used up" and can't be used for a formatting type, unless you start
encoding more information into it:  <item type="def:longformat">

I realize this is getting beyond the requirements spec, which emphasizes
bibles, so such things could be deferred to a later module.

-Harry

>
>