[Fwd: [sword-devel] Re: [osis-editors] OSIS 2.0.1 modules updated]

[Michael Paul Johnson]

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At 09:06 19-03-04, Todd Tillinghast wrote:
>Michael,
>
>I think you will find that in the majority of cases that you will be
>using <q> milestone containers rather than <q> containers because 
>quotes
>often cross other hierarchies, so the use of milestone exclusively is
>not much of a loss anyway.

Agreed.

>However, I would still recommend AGAINST <q n="" sID="UniqueID"
>who="Jesus"> to cause there to be no quotation marks for red letter
>Bibles.  The reasoning being that this IS truly a rendering issue.  
>If
>you render the same OSIS document without red letters you will render
>with no quote marks or at least have to check to see if the were left
>off because the who is Jesus.  It makes more sense to include the 
>quote
>marks as the default and then IF the rendering process uses red
>lettering when it sees who="Jesus" THEN drop the quote marks.  The 
>point
>being that the same OSIS document should be able to render a red 
>letter
>edition as well as a all black letter edition, by using the n="" for
>who="Jesus" cases you are LOOSING information. 

WHY do you think I would be losing information? If I mark the 
quotations of Jesus as I said, using something like <q who="Jesus" 
n="" sID="uniqueid">"actual quotation here inside of real quotation 
marks of the kind appropriate to this language and translation"<q n="" 
eID="uniqueid">, then you always have the correct punctuation, with no 
loss of information, regardless of if you are creating a "red letter 
edition" or a "black letter edition." There seems to be no good reason 
for your recommendation. Am I missing something?

I NEVER want ANY use of <q n=""> elements to result in generation of 
punctuation of any sort, including quotation marks. I intend to ALWAYS 
include the proper punctuation in the text itself, and always use the 
n="" parameter, except in one case (described below). IF you generate 
quotation marks from the XML markup that says not to, then YOU 
INTRODUCE ERRORS TO THE TEXT. If you honor the n="" attribute as you 
described it, then there are NO ERRORS INTRODUCED AND NO LOSS OF 
INFORMATION.

Let me put it another way. You seem to think that it is a good feature 
to have XML markup generate quotation marks. I believe such behavior 
is very bad most of the time. It is not a feature. It is a bug. I 
understand that you have been taught to think this way from your 
ethnocentric view of the English-speaking universe, but I see things 
much differently from my cross-cultural and multi-lingual experience.

Am I that unclear in what I am saying?

I want to totally separate two issues: (1) placement of quotation 
marks and what exact characters are in use, and (2) marking of Jesus' 
words only for the purpose of giving people a choice of rendering them 
differently (maybe with red letters) if they so choose.

For issue (1), I don't want to be forced to use XML markup to generate 
punctuation, especially underspecified XML markup like you propose. 
Punctuation is part of a language, just like the letters, syllabary, 
or pictograms. Why not just represent it in Unicode? Keep it simple, 
sir. The advantages of doing so far outweigh the advantages of 
converting to and from XML markup.

For issue (2), all I want to do is make it easy to give an option to 
people to render Jesus' direct quotes in some other way or not, 
WITHOUT CONFUSING THIS ISSUE WITH PUNCTUATION GENERATION AS PART OF 
THE RENDITION PROCESS.

>For other cases where the quote marks were left off for other reasons
>then I would use n="". 

I intend to use n="" for every use of <q ...> or <speech ...>, except 
one, because I intend to treat all punctuation as part of the text, 
not the markup. The only case where I would use <q> or <speech> as you 
envision using it would be the case where someone is drafting a new 
translation, and they want to use an automated process to generate the 
punctuation. HOWEVER, once that punctuation is generated and the 
translation is finalized, then all of the markup should be converted 
to proper punctuation within the text itself and replacing the n 
parameter in q or speech with "". That way, the text and style 
rendering information can be kept separate.


Rev. Michael Paul Johnson
Servant of Jesus Christ
http://eBible.org/mpj/

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