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

[Patrick Durusau]

DM,

DM Smith wrote:
> 
> 
<snipping for readability since we don't disagree about my earlier post>


> 
> Yes.
> 
> It helps for a quote when that quote is continued.
> 
> But the XSL becomes complicated for quotes continued within quotes. The 
> complication comes that it will be necessary to determine whether the 
> inner quote is being continued or the outer quote.
> 
> Example,
> "This is a quote, 'of a very
> 'long quote'
> "to show what the problem may be"
> 
> or
> 
> <p>
>       <q sID="a">
>     This is a quote,
>          <q sID="b">
>     of a very
> </p>
> <milestone type="cquote"/>
> <p>
>     long quote
>     <q eID="b"/>
> </p>
> <milestone type="cquote"/>
> <p>
>     to show what the problem may be
>     <q eID="a"/>
> </p>
> 
> The problem is more difficult if the quote is of a quote of a quote, ....
> 

Wait! Syntax error first:

</p>
<milestone type="cquote"/>
<p>
  long quote
<q eID="b"/>

Should be:

</p>
<p>
<milestone type="cquote"/>
  long quote
<q eID="b"/>

Recall that a milestone marks a point in the text stream, and if you 
want to use it for continued quotes, those must appear in the PCDATA 
where you want the continued quote to appear. These are not nodes on an 
axis so they must appear within whatever PCDATA you are trying to mark.

> It would be helpful to know what quote it is a continuation of.
> 

And that is difficult, why?

Recall that the encoder, not the stylesheet is marking the location of 
the continued quote. If we are going that far, seems like the careful 
encoder will use subtype to indicate a particular type of quote they 
want to appear.

That is to say the use of continued quotes was to allow the translator 
to insert a marker for the punctuation they desired. In other words, no 
computational processing, simply recognition of the marker and insertion 
of the proper character.

Having said all of that, why are we now concerned about what quote it is 
a continuation of? I understood the goal to be avoiding that question by 
allowing the translator to insert the continued quote mark.

If you don't want to compute the containing quotes, then don't. Don't 
see the advantage in having it partially represented by a marker and 
partially computed. A clean solution would require doing it one way or 
the other.

>  From a selfish point of view, I agree w/ Troy, I don't want to have to 
> know the language of the document and the kinds of quotes that are used 
> for that language.
>

Simply because XML/XSLT gives you the ability to do something does not 
compell you to use it.

Using the mechanisms already present in OSIS, you can encode the 
quotation marks that have been mentioned, and still have the ability to 
distinguish the use of apostrophe's for instance, something no one has 
commented about.

In order to localize an interface, which I assume will be displaying 
material from the text, I would suggest knowing something about the 
language beyond simply following what a translator has done is probably 
essential. If you don't understand why something has been done, which 
may depend upon both linguistic and cultural context, you may very well 
be creating an interface that impedes rather than enhances access to the 
text.

> Can you suggest a way to determine the proper quoting if the text were 
> Hindi? Hebrew? Greek? Spanish? French?
>

Quotation rules vary not only by language but by time period. The rules 
for modern usage, I assume that is what we are discussing?, can be found 
in any text treating a particular language.

There has been a lot of work done on localization and over the weekend I 
will see if I can find some pointers to punctuation issues. That is the 
most likely place to find a set of rules already mapped out.

Will see what I can come up with.

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great weekend!

Patrick




>>
>> Hope everyone is having a great day!
>>
>> Patrick
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
Patrick.Durusau at 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!