[osis-core] Longer term activities

[Steven DeRose]

Here are a bunch of things I think we should look into working on for 
the slightly-longer term:


1. One message that came through clearly in Rome is that most users 
really want some kind of simple software -- it ain't real til there's 
a program, apparently. So, I'd like to initiate a discussion of what 
we can do to address this (of course, we'll also want to make a nice 
archive of any tools on the web site). Among ideas I've already heard:

a. Hook up to emacs PSGML mode (Kirk already did this)

b. Set up CSS style sheets (I've got this in passable shape)

c. Create conversion utilities to get into OSIS (see Kees's note at 
12:33 PM +0200 05/02/02 re. USFM; another useful conversion might be 
from OSIS to Open eBook, which would get us access to a lot of 
readers).

d. Write a utility to check the book/chapter/verse structure: make 
sure milestone pairs are all pairs, occur in the right order, and 
have all and only the right verses and chapters and books. Should be 
switchable for catholic, jewish, and protestant canons, and be smart 
about things like the variant ending of Mark, etc.

e. Configure or develop a real editor people can use: open office 
plugin to import/export OSIS; Word macros (gak) and styles; jEdit 
mods; or similar.

f. Create a paratext-like tool that does OSIS natively and is 
cross-platform and open-source (perhaps building atop one of the Java 
text-editor toolkits I'm told are out there). I've started a 
requirements spec for such a tool. If we make it real simple, we can 
get it out there fast; if we go higher end, we could go after real 
funding and maybe hook up with the Granby consortium, which is trying 
to build such a tool for XML and TEI in general.


2. Prepare teaching materials and sign ourselves up to teach seminars 
on OSIS at various places.


3. Prepare cool materials. This could include more texts (though a 
bunch are underway already), or cool new xslt-generated editions. For 
example, ABS could easily offer on-demand diglots: if you happen to 
only speak swahili and spanish, you can have a Bible with those two, 
for example.

--- Ooh, sick idea: for Toronto, we could make people tell us their 
two best languages on their registration forms, and present everybody 
with the appropriate diglot in their registration packet; at least a 
Gospel or something...

Other cool materials might be a general cross-reference or footnote 
list in a form that can be merged into any text, plus the XSLT to do 
it.


4. Develop a blue-sky vision paper and executive summary, to use to 
go out and get funding for further work. This will become important 
really quickly.


5. Cultivate relationships and deeper involvement from various church 
traditions, Bible software developers, and professional associations.

6. If we want to make our references be an official fragment 
identifier scheme, we'd have to apply for an OSIS mime type (or 
create an x- one within the XML space, assuming Murata-san's proposal 
for sub-types of XML is flying by now), and there document our usage.

-- 

Steve DeRose -- http://www.stg.brown.edu/~sjd
Chair, Bible Technologies Group -- http://www.bibletechnologies.net
Email: sderose@speakeasy.net
Backup email: sderose@mac.com, sjd@stg.brown.edu