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

[chrislit at crosswire.org]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Jonathon Blake wrote:
> _CROSS_  might be in wider usage than OSIS.   [At least, none of the
> commercial vendors brag about using OSIS.  They do brag about using
> CROSS.]

Um. No, commercial vendors don't brag about using CROSS, the commercial 
vendor that owns CROSS does. CROSS is just XHTML data in a proprietary 
binary indexing/DRM wrapper. It's used, from what I can tell, in three 
branded products. Originally it was used in Bible Explorer. Then, when 
WORDSearch bought Bible Explorer, CROSS was used in the next version of 
WORDSearch. WORDSearch does advertise that they use CROSS. Now CROSS is 
also used by Bible Navigator, which I'm guessing is a branded version of 
WORDSearch, though I can't get their flash demos to work so that I can see 
some screenshots. They DON'T advertize (or mention) using CROSS anywhere 
on their website.

Based on the definitions I gave in a previous email today, CROSS, the 
Christian Reference Open Software Standard is neither open nor a standard. 
This shouldn't dissuade anyone from using CROSS-based products. It's just 
not comparable to OSIS--but they were defined with very different 
objectives in mind.

CROSS is fairly comparable to Libronix's format: both are proprietary, 
binary, indexed, DRM-wrapped files with end-user distribution as the 
primary focus. OSIS is more or less the opposite by all of these measures.

CROSS isn't even comparable to STEP since STEP was defined by committee 
through input from multiple groups and with the assumption that different 
STEP readers would be written to read the format.

--Chris