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

[Michael Paul Johnson]

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At 12:57 19-03-04, Todd Tillinghast wrote:
>I think you should view the character within the "n" attribute as a 
>part
>of the text AND a way to override the default behavior.  I think that
>overriding the default with nothing and then putting the quote mark 
>in
>the text itself is an unfortunate direction and makes the quote mark 
>no
>more or less a part of the text.

I'm sorry that you feel that this direction is unfortunate. I wish 
that you gave me a better choice-- a choice that worked in all the 
cases I communicated to you and to Patrick before. As I analyze the 
choices and the arguments you provide, I keep coming to the same 
conclusion. I won't waste your time with my analysis of the "facts" 
you presented. They didn't seem to have anything to do with the main 
issue, anyway. The option you call "unfortunate" is the best one. You 
see, I really want to encode Bible text losslessly and separately from 
style rendition issues. You don't seem to want to let me do that in 
the case of some punctuation marks. This puzzles me. Part of the 
beauty of an XML markup is that you can separate style rendition 
issues from the text itself. This means that ALL of the text should be 
in the OSIS document, complete with markup indicating the types of 
text (i. e. book names, paragraphs, poetry stanzas & lines, headings, 
footnotes, etc.). A separate document would contain all of the 
rendition issues such as fonts, how to mark footnotes & where to put 
them, etc., and the same OSIS text could be used to render many 
formats. If you move the punctuation from text to style sheets (even 
quotation marks) and make them a rendition option, which you do even 
with the "n" attribute holding the punctuation mark (because of the 
whole open quote reminder variation issue), then you are heading in a 
direction that I don't want to go. This is because there are too many 
variations in the ways quotations should be punctuated, and there is 
no guarantee that any OSIS reader will get them all right. I would say 
the probability of that happening is approximately zero for all but 
the most common cases, at least based on the current OSIS 
specification.

I'm still waiting for you to suggest a solution that is both 
acceptable to me and something that you could actually recommend.

Thank you for taking the time to read my comments and consider them.

May God bless you and grant you wisdom and skill in anything you do 
that pleases Him.

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