[sword-devel] tei proposal

[Matthew Talbert]

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Chris Little <chrislit at crosswire.org> wrote:
>
>
> Matthew Talbert wrote:
>> I have a proposal to make that could solve two issues at once. In the
>> simplest form, the proposal is to organize a group effort to convert
>> an existing public domain dictionary to tei. Specifically I would
>> suggest this:
>>
>> 1. host the source file via svn
>> 2. start with the straight output of mod2imp
>> 3. slowly, step-by-step, build up a complete module that eventually
>> validates and is a correct module.
>> 4. still allow minor updates and changes
>
> This sounds like a fine idea, in principle.
>
>> Although I wasn't around for it, I imagine that making the KJV module
>> taught everyone involved a good deal of OSIS and exposed lots of bugs
>> along the way. This project would have similar expectations.
>
> The OSIS encoding of the KJV module was basically done by Troy and DM.
> The collaborative part did not involve knowing how to encode OSIS.
>
>> I would suggest that this be hosted by crosswire, although I am
>> willing to do this myself if people are interested. I would also
>> suggest using Easton as a starting point, primarily because I'm
>> familiar with it, but also because it has lots of different issues to
>> address that would allow trying out a range of tei.
>
> I have no opinion on where to host it. I'm sure Troy would be fine with
> putting it in sword-tools/modules, which is where we've done this
> historically. A greater issue might be having to dole out tons of SVN
> accounts.
>
> Easton's is probably not a good choice if this is anything more than a
> training exercise. I'm planning to do some quick updates to our four
> main Bible dictionaries, as early as this weekend, including clean-up,
> some additional tagging, and conversion to TEI. ISBE, Smith, Nave, and
> Easton are on that list.

I would just point out that Easton does have cross-reference issues
that I will be very surprised if you can update quickly as well as
greek and hebrew references that in my opinion would be impossible to
address programatically because it uses very different
transliterations than the strongs.

I don't have a problem with tackling the ISBE either, as far as that goes.

So probably my preference would be to work on the Easton's then tackle
something bigger. Easton's has the advantage that it is small enough
to allow opening in standard text editors (such as gedit or
notepad++). I'm sure emacs could handle bigger files (although I've
never really tried), but these basic text editors are what most people
will be able to handle the easiest.

Matthew