[sword-devel] Getting stuff done (Re: External links)

[Ben Morgan]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:45 AM, Matthew Talbert <ransom1982 at gmail.com>wrote:

> > The point I was making was not that you can't encode it, but you lose the
> > semantic significance of it. The user can tell that <i>test</i> was
> added,
> > but the program can't - unless that is the only way <i> is ever used -
> which
> > it isn't. If you use italic formatting for anything else, you have lost
> > information - not presentation information - but the actual meaning is
> now
> > inaccessible to the program, as it can't necessarily tell what a
> particular
> > <i> means. If I want to mark translator added words in violet, or even
> allow
> > omitting them altogether, this is now not easily possible.
>
> I've been around long enough to know there is some disagreement here,
> but not long enough to really understand the issues. So my question
> isn't intended to create an argument, I just want to understand.
>
> If encoding in OSIS means that presentation information intended to be
> there by the publisher is lost, then why is that the preferred format?
> I would think that it would be really important to a publisher (or
> just to a module creator like me) that things are presented as they
> want them to be. Are you saying OSIS doesn't really allow that? If so,
> then shouldn't something else be used?
>

OSIS will allow some degree of presentation information (e.g. <hi type="i">)
Generally, you will present the OSIS how it is presented in a print Bible.
But sometimes, you may want to do something different - like omitting it,
changing how it looks, etc. Also, for something like poetry, this requires
special frontend support - but the end product for the ESV in BPBible, for
example, is very close to a print ESV. You can't really encode this with
ThML (that I know of).

If you just specified *how it looks*, not *what it actually is*, you can't
support very complicated layout. Especially since modules are restricted to
(http://crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/ThML_modules):

> <sync> (with type parameters of Strongs, morph, & lemma), <scripRef>, and
> <note> (plus closing tags where appropriate). HTML tags that ThML inherits,
> which may be used in SWORD modules include <div> (with types of sechead for
> section headings and title for titles, <i>, <br>, and <b>. Additional HTML
> tags may be interpreted by those SWORD frontends that render HTML, but will
> not be translated to RTF for the Win32 frontend.
>

So OSIS tries to encode what the publisher means, not how it happens to
look. How it looks will be decided by the frontend - but this will generally
adhere to print Bible conventions.

As well, using OSIS helps searchability - search in Words of Christ, omitted
text, poetry, etc.

God Bless,
Ben
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Multitudes, multitudes,
   in the valley of decision!
For the day of the LORD is near
   in the valley of decision.

Giôên 3:14 (ESV)
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