[osis-users] Markup for notes in RSV

[Peter West]

Hello Mike,

Thanks for replying.  I had seen that page, and was looking at one of the version of Titus from there.

Would I be right in assuming that the OSIS markup has turned out to be too finicky to be generally used? There doesn't seem to have been much activity in recent years.

I'm doing this, at least initially, to satisfy one of my own particular itches. I've been reading quite a bit lately about the ending of St Mark's gospel. Some time ago I read Burgon's The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to St Mark. Since then I have read The Synoptic Problem, by Mark Goodacre, and have cleaned up his HTML to some extent.  Something Goodacre takes for granted is that St Mark ends at 16:8.  In The Synoptic Problem he argues that Mark is the original gospel, and that Matthew and Luke are Mark plus some editorial changes and some extra material. The subsequent argument will be that, as Mark, from whom the other gospels are derived, has no references to the Resurrection, it didn't happen. You can see these guys coming from a long way off. James Snapp Jr has written a wonderful book, Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20 which updates the arguments in support of Marcan authorship.

So much for the background. It occurred to me that it would be very useful to have a dynamic synopsis of the gospels. I envisage it as a three or four column layout in which you can select one gospel as a key. That gospel will be laid out in order, with the corresponding passages from the other gospels aligned to the key.  I would also want to be able to provide for display of passages common to any two gospels, and for the unique passages.

This sort of thing is what XSLT excels at, and that requires an XML vocabulary that includes all of the relevant information. I happen to use an RSV CE because it is the most recent translation that is at all bearable.  I'm not committed to the Catholic version, particularly if I can find a translation with the gospels already comprehensively marked up. I suspect that I will need to augment such markup in any case.  For example, it seems to me that the common occurrence in synopses of "runs" of text that is very similar between gospels, deserves its own markup indicators.  Sometimes these structures have further complications, in that the order of some sentences may vary, or one gospel may have an extra sentence or two. Representing such information is tricky, and my initial skimming of the OSIS manual and schema has not been encouraging in this respect. Fortunately, OSIS allows plenty of scope for local definitions.

I have a Protestant RSV study bible to which I will refer to resolve any issues in the gospels' mark-up. While my focus is on the synopses, I would not miss the opportunity to include cross-references to the other books of the Bible.

Many thanks,
Peter


Peter West

"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."

On 21/09/2013, at 6:05 AM, Mike Hart <just_mike_y at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Peter, 
> 
> Examples of footnotes marked up in OSIS can be viewed at: 
> 
> http://www.bibletechnologies.net./osistext/
> 
> Caveat emptor:
> 
> I think the version of OSIS described on this site is a very slightly older version than what the SWORD format supports, but the basics are the same. See the OSIS Changes page on the Crosswire site for details about what may vary from OSIS 2.1.1 within SWORD. I don't see anything affecting footnotes, but I deal in USFM almost entirely for the last couple years, and haven't paid attention to discussions on OSIS changes.
> 
> http://crosswire.org/wiki/OSIS_211_CR
> 
> How are you tackling this project? What source are you using that you need to be worried about what appears in print? I would expect the Catholic Biblical Association to already have footnotes marked up in some electronic way. But since the RSV predates any standard markup by several decades,  I may be overly optimistic about the current level of technology in the Catholic Church for an older version like this.
> 
> Also, if I remember right, the Catholic RSV has some versification changes from the Protestant version that you will need to be aware of if you are trying to merge footnotes from a Catholic source to text from a Protestant source.  Psalms comes to mind first, but there are other books with small but critical differences that would cause special programmatic challenges with the project you propose. 
> 
> From: Peter West <lists at pbw.id.au>
> To: osis-users at crosswire.org 
> Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 10:07 AM
> Subject: [osis-users] Markup for notes in RSV
> 
> I'm looking at adding the footnotes from the Catholic Edition of the RSV to the existing (non-Catholic) version of the RSV file.
> 
> This is my first encounter with OSIS, so I have a few questions.
> 
> Mark 1:1 has the following text:
> 
> The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
> 
> followed by a superscript "a." The footnote for "a" is:
> 
> Other ancient authorities omit _the Son of God_.
> 
> The recording of notes and variant readings seems to offer a wealth of possibilities.  What's the best practice?
> 
> The first cross-reference for Mark is this:
> 1.2-8: Mt 3.1-12; Lk 3.2-16; Jn 1.6, 15, 19-28.
> 
> What is the best practice for this markup?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Peter West
> 
> "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
> 
> 
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