[sword-devel] Bible Technologies Conference

[Harry Plantinga]

The main purpose of the Bible Technologies Conference 
was to organize the Bible Technologies Working Group,
the task of which is to set XML markup standards for
bibles and biblical literature. Several working groups
were formed, with tasks such as standardizing bible book
names and abbreviations, standardizing markup needed for
business practices such as rights management, looking into
existing markup standards such as TEI, XSem, ThML, XPointer,
LGM, etc., to see what each is good for, defining markup 
needed for authoring problems of various sort, and the like.
I don't remember all of the topics -- maybe someone else does.  
I suppose more information will be forthcoming on the mailing 
list and web site.

The eventual goal is to have some standards that may possibly 
be submitted to a standards body such as the W3C.  But will 
there be a single resulting XML markup language that
meets everyone's needs? I doubt it, as does some of the
leadership of that group, such as Robin Cover.  And if there
is one, its intent will be for document interchange between
publishers, not a native file format that bible software 
will be expected to use as a native format.  It would also be 
years away.

On the use of ThML, remember that real digital libraries have 
texts coming from lots of different sources.  Typically they
have different input paths filters for different sorts of texts,
and as I understand it that's your architecture as well.
You might think of support of ThML as a way of making the 100s
of CCEL texts available for use -- but there will likely be 
other input paths as well.

I don't know what to make of the phrase "main markup." Is the
intent that ThML will be the native file format or the internal
representation of a document?  If so, you'd want to make sure
that it handles all your needs, but I'd guess you've done that.
I'm also willing to make modest changes to the language, should
it be necessary.  But you probably will need additional 
information in an internal representation or file format, e.g. 
the list of words for searching, locations of ids, etc. 

Might it be necessary to switch some day?  I wouldn't think so--
import and export filters should be all you need, unless you 
find some major new applications which requires changing the 
internal representation. But then you'd be more likely to 
augment than to start over from scratch, I'd guess.

-Harry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sword-devel@crosswire.org
> [mailto:owner-sword-devel@crosswire.org]On Behalf Of Troy A. Griffitts
> Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 5:08 PM
> To: bt-devel@crosswire.org; sword-devel@crosswire.org
> Subject: [sword-devel] BT Conference [was: Re: [bt-devel] Latest build
> of bibletime.]
> 
> 
> > > > I'm also curious what the Bible Technologies Conference 
> results will be.
> > > > It would be bad if we implemented ThML as main markup, but 
> then later a
> > > > new standard would be created by the BibleTechConference guys.
> > >
> > > When's the Conference?
> > 
> > Not sure. I guess in the next days. I hope Troy will keep us posted.
> 
> Guys,
> 	Sorry to be so delayed.  The conference was last week and went really
> well.  I'm hoping to post a debriefing of the events very soon.  We are
> slated to host the working groups here, so you'll all have the ability
> to easily take part in the production of the specs.  The url is
> bibletechnologieswg.org (wg = working groups).  It currently just points
> to the root of our server now.  Keep an eye on the news groups (osis.*)
> on our server.
> 
> 	Hoping to give you a rundown of the Wycliffe and BTC trip very soon. 
> Actually, maybe Chris, Harry, Drew, or Bob will also post some things.
> 
> 	-Troy.
> 
> PS.  It was fun meeting some of you there.
>