[sword-devel] OSIS Users Manual considered confusing

Sat Mar 3 06:08:30 MST 2012

So, I have at least a little bit working version of CzeCSP and I would
like to eliminate some kinks. One of them is using milestones v.
containers in the text.

So I have a friend who has just Nokia phone with Symbian 60 OS. By
browsing through crosswire.org/wiki I found Go Bible as probably the
only suitable front-end for him (am I right? Isn't there a native
Sybmian 60 front-end?). However, when looking at
http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Projects:Go_Bible/Go_Bible_Creator I found
that

> For use with Go Bible Creator, an OSIS file must be of the container
>  type, not the milestone type.

(does it mean only chapters as containers or also verses as ones?)

And I am in this container/milestone hell again. In the first moment I
have even written a Python script converting milestoned <verse/> based
Bible into container <verse> based one
(https://gitorious.org/sword/czekms-csp_bible/blobs/master/demilestonize.py),
but before changing my XSLT scripts to generate back containered
chapters I made a brutal mistake of trying to understand the proper way.

By searching through the archives of this list I found that generally
the proper way how to structure the Bible is Book-Section-Paragraph and
chapters and verses should be just overlapping (i.e., milestoned)
overstructure on top of this. OK. How well is this form of the OSIS
document supported by the sword software?

Then I've made a terrible mistake and opened OSIS Users Manual (OSIS
Schema 2.1.1 on
http://img.forministry.com/7/7B/7BB51FB8-84B3-4FF3-939ED473FA90A632/DOC/OSIS2_1UserManual_06March2006_-_with_O%27Donnell_edits.PDF
linked from http://www.bibletechnologies.net/ ... that's the current
OSIS standard, right?). There I found to my astonishment what kind of
... this standard is (I know, this is a Christian list, so I should mind
my language).

So on page 36 I have an example of the Bible structured with

<title>text of chapter title</title>
<chapter>
<verse sID=""/>
asdas
<verse eID=""/>
</chapter>

(who in the world thought about <title> element before <chapter> one?)

just on the following page we have

<div type="book">
	<head>text of the book title</head>
	<chapter>
		<head>text of the chapter title</head>
	...
	</chapter>
</div>

and yet next page we have

<chapter>
<title>text of chapter title</title>
<verse osisID=""/>
asdas
</verse>
</chapter>

and finally on page 40 I see that "The chapter element has a
chapterTitle attribute that enables users to insert a text string to be
used as the chapter's title."

I am a programmer. I can implement even very strange standards, but this
kind of crud (sorry for my French) is really unbelievable. Do we have
somewhere a list of what the real standard is, i.e., what has been
actually implemented in libsword? What is generally considered an 
expected structure of the text?

I see that this “standard” is from 2006. Does anybody work on actually 
making this into something sensible?

Sorry for my ranting.

Blessings,

Matěj

-- 
http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej/, Jabber: mcepl<at>ceplovi.cz
GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC

understand, v.:
     To reach a point, in your investigation of some subject, at
     which you cease to examine what is really present, and
     operate on the basis of your own internal model instead.