[sword-devel] OSIS:What is the future? Who is using it now?

[Chris Little]

L.Allan-pbio wrote:
>> Please, any of you that have the time, read the manual and provide 
>> revisions and comments. As they are actively working on OSIS 2.5, now 
>> is a good time.
> 
> Based on your reading, would the upgraded osis spec be usable to prepare 
> a module that could be used to generate a printable Sharing Bible tract, 
> for example? Back in late 2004, I tried to use osis 2.x to prepare such 
> a tract.
>
> From then until now, I don't think the osis spec changed materially (not 
> including the upcoming spec).

Please see my 2/7/2006 9:20 PM response to you, where I addressed this 
issue. If that is insufficient, please ask more explicit questions about 
your problems. There's no reason I can see why you couldn't have done 
what you describe as far back as OSIS 1.0.

> The idea was to have a format from which transforms could be used to 
> generate webpages and matching .pdf's for printing duplexed bi-fold 
> output. The content was roughly 2/3rds Bible verses and 1/3 "prose". My 
> impression was that if it could be done, the markup of the osis itself 
> wouldn't be all that different from preparing a General Book ... lots of 
> verses, but not any versification structure.
> http://www.bibleinverse.org/sharingbibles/sb12/Sb2FrontPage.html  (draft)

Verses still go in <verse> elements. Other text (and the verse 
containers themselves) go in <p> and <div> elements.

> At that time, it seemed osis wasn't appropriate because that 
> functionality wasn't available yet, at least based on the feedback I got 
> from the osis list. Has that changed?

What functionality?

> The more general question would be ... is the upgraded spec appropriate 
> for things like commentaries and "General Books" such as SAOA, SME, 
> and/or "The Practice the Presence of God"? Does it have capabilites for 
> "page markup" to guide a transform for printing?

Some of these books were OSIS 1.0/1.1 example documents. There is no 
special difficulty in encoding any of them in OSIS.

OSIS has an element <pb> for marking page breaks (and I believe it has 
since 1.0). I believe it is a suggestion for where to produce a printed 
page break or an indication of where page breaks occurred in a printed 
edition. That is as much typesetting-oriented markup as you are ever 
likely to see in OSIS (or ThML, I believe). Typesetting markup is WAY 
outside the proper scope of OSIS.

> Or am I uninformed and is osis not intended for that kind of module? Was 
> the "missing pieces" more a matter of transforms? Can GBF do a General 
> Book? Can osis be used to convert much of the content of CCEL which uses 
> (mostly?) ThmL?

OSIS can be used to encode all of the content at CCEL--and it was, via 
style sheets, at the time of OSIS 1.1 (IIRC). I don't know the current 
status, but at that time, all ThML content was available as OSIS too.

> If not, is such capability envisioned for osis 2.5 or subsequent versions?

If none of that answered your questions (or if you have follow-ups), 
feel free to ask.

--Chris