[osis-editors] Re: [sword-devel] The death of OSIS?

[DM Smith]

	I have the same concern in helping to develop JSword. I don't want to 
have language/locale specific processing of the Bible. It is best left 
up to language experts that create the Bible translation in the first place.

	I also think that OSIS should be robust enough preserve all visible 
jots and tittles of the original work. That is, OSIS should be 
sufficient to become an "editorial master" of the original work.

	The problem that I have with a header element is a general issue I have 
with putting control information into primary data: it would need to 
exist in a well published location of the Bible (i.e. OSIS schema) so it 
could be found. We would need to do this at least once per OSIS bible 
and would need to pass it along to XSLT when rendering the text.

	Of course, Sword could pull it out and put it into the conf where it 
maintains the other control information.

	With regard to quotes, are there only two levels of quoting? Can't 
there be more? Kind of a I said, "that she said, 'that he said, <I did it>'"

	Also, when/if we get to books like Kittles where there are many 
languages, each with their own quotation system, we would need to set 
quotation rendering for each change of language. Or do the simpler 
approach of embedding the quotation directly in the text.

	What if we get a devotional or commentary that quotes the NIV, the 
Message, NASB, Die Heilige Schrift, ..., doesn't it need to preserve the 
quotation marks of each of these?

	If we have a parallel work of arbitrary Bibles how would the quotations 
be rendered? (In the JSword we create an OSIS document for the requested 
passage and render it w/ XSLT, and we plan to present 
parallel/interlinear passages).

	I think that the simplest and most straightforward means of answering 
any of these questions is to allow quotation marks directly in the text. 
And perhaps mark them such that a system that does not want to render 
the original as it is provided can strip them out or modify them as desired.

DM

Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
> Patrick,
>     I understand Michael's point.  On a few occasions I have voiced a 
> concern regarding <q>/" rendering, for a little different, more selfish 
> reason, but haven't pressed the issue too much:
> 
>     As a developer of software for rendering OSIS texts, I do NOT want 
> to be forced to have a language expert on staff that encorporates all 
> diverse QUOTE rendering logic for each language we support, into our 
> software.
> 
>     ie. I don't want my software to have to know how a Spanish Bible 
> expects its quotes to be rendered, just because it is Spanish.
> 
>     I wouldn't get it right for Spanish, much less for any of a hundred 
> other languages I've never heard of.
> 
>     There NEEDS to be a programmatic way to derive the rendering of 
> quote marks simply, and without software variation based on the language.
> 
>     I would suggest a heading element similar to
> 
> <renderQ render="true" open1='"' open2="'" openContinuation1='"' 
> openContinuation2="'" />
> 
>     (please ignore symantics of above suggestion, but understand what it 
> is attempting to supply)
> 
>     MPJ could simply specify <renderQ render="false">, then use <q 
> who="Jesus"> to mark all the quote containers he wishes, and use ",' and 
> whatever else he wants in his doc.  (This is probably how I would prefer 
> quotes, as well, at the expense of the Theoretical Publisher who wishes 
> to change his rendered quote style for each edition of his text.)
> 
> 
>     Preserving original document quote content is also a concern, but my 
> overwhelming desire for this is to relieve the burden for myself to 
> actually KNOW OR CARE how all languages of the world render their quotes.
> 
>         -Troy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> 
>> Greetings,
>>
>> As one of the principals in the OSIS project I must confess I an not 
>> encouraged by statements announcing the illness or death of OSIS.
>>
>> I realize that I have not always been as prompt as I would like in 
>> answering suggestions/complaints but that is a reflection on my time 
>> management and not the viability of the OSIS standard.
>>
>> Rather than simply taking shots from the cheap seats, perhaps you 
>> would like to suggest markup based solutions to any problems you 
>> encounter with OSIS?
>>
>> Note that I said markup solutions, realizing that most of the problems 
>> that have been brought to my attention involve presentation, which is 
>> NOT something markup is intended to cover. Seems unfair to blame OSIS 
>> for something markup was never intended to do.
>>
>> If you want absolute control over appearance you need to use 
>> Postscript, PDF, Word or TeX as your Bible format. See how portable 
>> that will be across platforms or into other formats. (Well, with the 
>> exception of TeX but it is not widely supported.)
>>
>> Actually markup can handle presentation as well, but only as part of 
>> the transformation process, such as XSL-FO, but that is not covered by 
>> OSIS.
>>
>> So, rather than posturing with negative statements about OSIS, how 
>> about making constructive suggestions? I am in the last stages of a 
>> new version of the users manual and could use constructive suggestions.
>>
>> Hope you are having a great day!
>>
>> Patrick
>>
>> Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:
>>
>>> At 16:18 11-08-04, Chris Little wrote:
>>>
>>>> Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 1. OSIS does not properly preserve quotation punctuation in all 
>>>>> cases, as 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> currently documented. Furthermore, the keepers of the standard don't 
>>>> seem to think that quotation punctuation is important to preserve, 
>>>> but they seem to believe that such punctuation should always be 
>>>> generated from markup according to modern English rules of grammar, 
>>>> independent of the way the translators punctuated their work. 
>>>> Therefore, it is impossible to code a Bible translation in OSIS that 
>>>> differs in the way quotations are punctuated and expect that OSIS 
>>>> readers and renderers will render the quotation punctuation 
>>>> correctly. Just ignoring the <q> tag doesn't work if you want to 
>>>> mark text for possible use in a "red letter" edition.
>>>>
>>>> We've covered this a great deal, including downsides to your 
>>>> suggestions.  The best solution will probably lie in identifying, 
>>>> presumably in the header or on each <q> element, the rendered form. 
>>>> Encoding quotation marks directly is just not a good solution.  If 
>>>> you're willing to entertain the possibility that others who have 
>>>> opinions differing from your own just might have good ideas too, you 
>>>> can re-read the previous threads in sword-devel or the discussions 
>>>> in osis-core (I think it is publicly archived).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have never gotten a satisfactory response to my objections. 
>>> Granted, I haven't seen everything in sword-devel, and I didn't read 
>>> any discussion about that in osis-core. I tried to find the archive, 
>>> but could not find it on my first attempt. A direct pointer (URL) 
>>> would be appreciated.
>>>
>>> I am quite willing to entertain the possibility that others with 
>>> differing opinions might have good ideas, too. I am not willing to 
>>> use a Bible interchange format that systematically allows for 
>>> corruption of the punctuation or that always enforces English rules 
>>> of punctuation.
>>>
>>> I can easily live with identifying the rendered form of each 
>>> quotation punctuation mark in each <q> element, provided that I can 
>>> put a <q> element everywhere that a quotation punctuation mark should 
>>> be, including opening punctuation mark reminders at paragraph and 
>>> stanza beginnings. It doesn't have to be elegant. It doesn't have to 
>>> be implemented the way I want it. It just has to work and it has to 
>>> be included in a way that works in the standard.
>>>
>>>
>>>> OSIS was designed with at least one principle in common with Perl: 
>>>> "Common things should be easy; advanced things should at least be 
>>>> possible."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I like that philosophy. I may differ in my opinion of how well this 
>>> was implemented. I would have considered rendering the words and 
>>> punctuation, including quotation marks (whichever quotation marks are 
>>> used in the target language and style of the translation in 
>>> question), of Bible text to be a common thing that should be easy. I 
>>> also think that verse marking -- probably the most common thing done 
>>> in Bible texts -- would be easier, but that is a minor nit.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> 5. OSIS expects a lot of metadata not found in many existing Scripture 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> texts to be added to it to comply with higher levels of conformance. 
>>>> This may slow or prevent the conversion of some texts to OSIS.
>>>>
>>>> No one expects every document to conform to the highest levels of 
>>>> conformance.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but even the lowest level of conformance excludes the best OSIS 
>>> I could generate for the World English Bible, primarily because of 
>>> the quotation marking issue. The fact that you consider that level of 
>>> OSIS to be unacceptable for direct reading by the Sword Project is, 
>>> to me, an indicator that OSIS itself is inadequate in its current form.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I think there is more support than you know of.  Again, just because 
>>>> no one bothered to tell you about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  
>>>> I believe an OSIS document was used earlier this year as the basis 
>>>> for a new Bible's first printing.  There are applications for 
>>>> editing, converting, rendering, and reading OSIS documents.  And 
>>>> there are around a dozen fully marked OSIS Bibles that I know of 
>>>> (and that excludes all of CCEL's documents that are converted by 
>>>> stylesheet and CrossWire's documents converted by exporters).
>>>>
>>>> The rumors of OSIS' death are greatly exaggerated.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe... but the jury is still out.
>>>
>>> I guess what I'm really saying is that the patient needs some care. 
>>> It may die, or it may just be crippled. Now is a critical time in 
>>> OSIS' life. Maybe nobody cares if I use or support OSIS. Maybe nobody 
>>> cares about little details like preserving quotation marks.
>>>
>>> Sometimes you have to make some noise to see if the patient is dead 
>>> or deaf...
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sword-devel mailing list
>>> sword-devel at crosswire.org
>>> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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