[osis-core] Leading zeros in osisIDs and osisRefs

[Todd Tillinghast]

Patrick and Steve,

Patrick, on the call today you mentioned that you and Steve had decided
that there could be leading zeros on osisIDs and that they should be
numeric.

I think there are two categories of osisIDs, with two sub-categories for
one.
1) osisIDs for Bible references
	a) OSIS standard Bible references
	b) OSIS non-standard Bible references (People should be free to
shoot themselves in the foot.)
2) osisIDs for non-Bible references


For non-Bible reference systems, there should be the flexibility to use
any character (except the special XML characters) in any position.  For
example the book "The Best Book On Plants Of The Bible" might have an
osisID="Desert.PricklyPlants.pricklyamila".

I know that there is problem with the Catholic reference system if
chapter identifiers are restricted to numeric, because Ester has A, B,
C, ... chapter identifiers mixed in with numerics; also there is a
prolog that is considered canonical.

I think people should be free to use leading zeros, if they want to
create an osisID that will not work well with other documents.

If there are leading zeros in an osisID they should NOT BE EQUAVALENT
with similar osisIDs that have the same value without the leading zeros.

When it comes to what I would call OSIS Standard Bible references.  I
strongly believe that there should NOT be leading zeros in osisIDs.  By
allowing leading zeros there are several possible string representations
for the equivalent osisID.

Ps.1.1 = Ps.01.01 = Ps.1.01 = Ps.01.1 = Ps.001.001 etc...

If we allow leading zeros in "OSIS Standard Bible references", the
ability to create a simple expression using string matching is removed
AND would force the use of specialized software to parse the identifier
and then test for equivalency based on a numeric value.

Todd