[osis-core] canonical order in scope

[Patrick Durusau]

Chris,

Chris Little wrote:
> We have a small ambiguity in the <scope> element, I think.  If I desire to 
> indicate that my document covers all 66 books of the Protestant canon, I 
> assume that would be indicated with <scope>Gen-Rev</scope>.
> 
> So what do I use to indicate that my document covers all books in the
> Catholic canon?  Isn't that also, technically Gen-Rev?
> 

Well, there is ambiguity, but only if the user chooses an ambiguous 
indicator for scope. ;-)

In other words, the naive user may well choose, <scope>Gen-Rev</scope>, 
thinking that "everyone knows" that means the Protestant/Catholic/other, 
canon.

I don't see that as a problem with <scope> as much as poor choice of an 
indicator.

If you want to go down this road, what happens if I say:

<scope>Mark</scope>?

Both canons have Mark, but in some it is longer than others.

Same problem.

If you tied the <scope> value to an edition, since it is osisRefType, 
then you could have: (made this up so don't protest Todd) 
POT.en.2005.Gen-Malachi, the first token refers to the osisWork 
attribute on a work element for Pat's Old Testament.

> I think we either need to define a canonical book ordering, disallow book 
> ranges in scope, or define some other solution that I haven't thought of.  
> I suppose this depends somewhat upon having standard reference systems 
> that we haven't yet defined.
> 

As I note above, I really don't think it is a range issue really. It is 
more a question of the identity of the books within a particular canon 
that is the problem. Made worse by the desire of everyone to have theirs 
be the default and everyone else's is somehow a second class citizen.

I think developing a work based option with cut-n-paste work 
declarations in the users manual is probably the best option. Then you 
can pick whatever you want. Or brew your own. Course, using the standard 
ones will give you a chance at useful interchange.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick



> --Chris
> 
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-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!