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<p>Robert's point about also standardizing Scripture metadata with
the ScriptureBurrito standard is a good one.</p>
<p>USX's limitations relative to OSIS are both an advantage and a
disadvantage. Because USX is more focused on primarily Scriptures,
it has the advantage that the markup is less ambiguous and more
likely to be understood by someone else who just read the
standard, but had no additional information. It is clearly better
as an interchange format between applications. OSIS is probably
better for non-Scripture texts, or would be if it had enough
software support. Ironically, constraining the ways in which data
can be represented makes it easier to represent a richly formatted
Bible. Importing from a ScriptureBurrito could include not only
the USX Bible text, but metadata for our config files.<br>
</p>
<p>Both USX and OSIS lack style sheets that say how data should be
presented, since both are (mostly) semantic markup. Paratext uses
external style sheets for this purpose, at least for display
within that program. Various other publishing paths have their own
style sheets, which are not really standard.<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/18/24 11:41, Robert Hunt wrote:<br>
</div>
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cite="mid:c994f38c-0fee-4388-ab25-495c53a3f01e@gmail.com">
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<p>Just to add a little to Michael Johnson's comments below, OSIS
can include significantly more metadata than USX specifies
(which is little more than the book code -- not even whether
it's an original text (Heb/Greek) or what language translation
it is). OSIS can specify many other things like version number,
licenses and contributors' names, etc.<br>
</p>
<p>So for a fair comparison with OSIS, I think you'd have to
specify USX <b>along with ScriptureBurrito metadata</b>: see <a
href="https://www.burrito.bible/" moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.Burrito.Bible</a>
(which is also in the process of being supported by the most
influential Bible-translation orgs AFAIK).</p>
<p>Blessings,<br>
Robert.<br>
<a href="https://OpenEnglishTranslation.Bible"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://OpenEnglishTranslation.Bible</a><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 19/02/24 10:19, Michael Johnson
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:d429b565-10e8-4102-92f9-1f863fa46b24@eBible.org">
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<p>Thank you, Michael, for the pointer to Jonathan Robie's paper
on Scriptural markup in the Bible translation community. I
think it diplomatically states why USX won out over OSIS as
the primary and best-supported XML standard for representing
Scripture.</p>
<p>I really don't expect USFM or USX to go away any time soon,
nor do I expect OSIS to gain significant traction where it is
not in use already. I think it is safe to say that Crosswire
is the group that cares most about OSIS. In many ways, the USX
vs. OSIS competition is like the old VHS vs. BetaMax video
tape competition. (Remember way back when video tapes were
actually used?) BetaMax was technically superior in many ways,
but VHS won because of (1) greater support by content
providers, (2) slightly lower cost of implementation, and (3)
incompatibility between the formats (i.e. no machine could
read both formats).</p>
<p>I honestly think that fully supporting USX would be a better
use of limited resources than tweaking OSIS to overcome its
current defects.</p>
<p>For those that don't know, USX is an XML representation of
USFM.</p>
<p>USX is well documented and actively maintained at <a
href="https://ubsicap.github.io/usx/"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" moz-do-not-send="true">https://ubsicap.github.io/usx/</a>.
OSIS is abandoned by almost everyone by Crosswire. Backup
copies of the Schema or on crosswire.org and eBible.org, but
there is currently no official pumpkin holder to maintain it.</p>
<p>USX is fully automatically convertable to and from USFM with
no loss or human intervention needed. This is not true of pure
OSIS for technical and philosophical reasons. This is probably
the biggest reason that OSIS was never supported natively in
Paratext, and most likely never will be.<br>
</p>
<p>USX is the native format of the Every Tribe Every Nation
Digital Bible Library, which is the highest-quality and
best-supported repository of Bible translations in the world.</p>
<p>USX and/or USFM are supported by all of the best Bible
translation software, including open source options. OSIS has
no Bible translation software support.</p>
<p>USX and/or USFM are supported by numerous Bible publishing
options, both digitally and for print. OSIS has no significant
Bible publishing support outside of Crosswire.</p>
<p>USX has organizational support from the most influential
Bible translation agencies.<br>
</p>
<p>Using USX and/or USFM makes versification mapping easier,
because someone else has already done the work.</p>
<p>There are currently at least 2 reasonable ways to convert
from USFM or USX to OSIS with minimal losses in formatting.
Neither one is perfect, but maybe good enough. There is a lot
of code assuming OSIS inputs to Sword modules, and that could
remain, along with GBF and TEI, but I can see better quality
coming from direct USX support.</p>
<p>If OSIS is good enough as is, fine. But if it isn't, then I
suggest that it be phased out rather than modified.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/18/24 09:42, Michael H wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAJ9hia8J-B-uoH3GGQ9ALLtiBaG7RD9_vXXPYHR0KgqqiPKCWg@mail.gmail.com">
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<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:garamond,serif;font-size:large">Re:
Lack of momentum for OSIS. <br>
<br>
OSIS as described on wikipedia is owned by a committee
including United Bible Societies, SIL International, and
the Society of Biblical Literature. <br>
<br>
However, this team got together and created the version
that is available, then almost completely ignored it, and
went back to the SFM tagging system and then produced
USFM, when turned into several more closely related XML
languages, but has become USX. There was in the UBS/SIL
Paratext translation program the ability to produce OSIS
output until version 8, but since about 2016, there is no
use or mention of OSIS in Paratext. <br>
<br>
A history and analysis of why this is published in
Balisage 2021 conference: <br>
<br>
<a
href="https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol26/html/Robie01/BalisageVol26-Robie01.html"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol26/html/Robie01/BalisageVol26-Robie01.html</a><br>
<br>
Even in 2024, the tagging language USFM remains the
"primary" tool to encode biblical works at almost all the
organizations that produced OSIS. There is no momentum for
that committee to ever meet again. But the spec has
holes. <br>
<br>
<a href="https://gitlab.com/cmahte/osis-users-manual-2.1"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://gitlab.com/cmahte/osis-users-manual-2.1</a><br>
<br>
I started working on updating OSIS, and in the process
received a reply from someone at ABS or UBS that although
the OSIS spec is copyrighted and does not contain specific
verbiage about reuse, I could and should consider it
licensed under creative commons BY-SA. (At the time, I
wasn't seeking to update OSIS, but freely copy from it in
creating a successor or fork.) <br>
<br>
This means that OSIS is both abandoned and available for
adoption by a successor body. I've also since moved on
from ever producing proposed changes to it or a fork
myself. IF I ever got far enough along to need a formal
spec, it would be extensions USFM or to OpenDocument or
more directly synonymous with that XML. If you're
interested, I'll dig up the contact information, and pass
it along. But I do have a copy re-edited into USFM (or
more specifically a draft version of PSFM... which means
the way tables are built in my text are unusual.) If there
is an effort to update. I can transform my work into
LibreOffice Writer format. <br>
<br>
I suggest it is time to consider an OSIS 3, or at least an
OSIS 2.2 spec that is owned by a successor organization
instead of organizations that effectively abandoned it.
That's the missing link which would provide a mechanism to
actually make changes to the standard. People (including
me) keep doing this search and landing at Crosswire Bible
society as the best option for a new owner. But maybe who
OWNS can be one of the topics considered by a committee. <br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Feb 17, 2024 at
9:47 AM Arnaud Vié <<a
href="mailto:unas.zole%2Bavie@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">unas.zole+avie@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
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<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi everyone,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Having dived into the whole crosswire ecosystem
recently, I'm at the same time impressed at the
quality of the tools provided (in particular the OSIS
standard and the JSword lib, as I've been working in
Java), and worried by what I perceive as a lack of
dynamism around it's development and difficulty to
contribute.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>By "lack of dynamism" I of course don't mean to
criticise the time anyone spends (as we contribute to
a free ecosystem, we all have lives keeping us busy
elsewhere), but rather to highlight how rough it is
for external enthusiastic people to join.</div>
<div>For example, I'd like to contribute evolutions to
the OSIS standard around versification systems, but I
have no idea where to make such proposals, as there is
only <a
href="http://crosswire.org/pipermail/osis-core/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">a mailing
list dead since 2015</a>, <a
href="https://wiki.crosswire.org/Category:OSIS"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">a few wiki
pages</a> and <a href="https://crosswire.org/osis/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">a few
downloadable documents</a> which are supposedly the
latest version.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I think a lot of that could be improved by making
better use of <a href="https://github.com/crosswire"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">the crosswire
github project</a>, which is nowadays the first
contact most young developers will have with these
crosswire projects.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'd like to propose a few changes, get your
opinions, and volunteer to execute them if everyone
agrees.</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Revive the jsword github repository</b>.<br>
That includes</li>
<ul>
<li>Backporting the <a
href="https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">relevant
changes from the andbible fork</a> (excluding
android-specific stuff - which I already mostly
removed in my last PR there).<br>
</li>
<li>Setting up a release process to publish the
jar on a maven repository.</li>
<li>Setting up a clear branching model and writing
clear contribution guidelines.<br>
</li>
<li>Having a team of several people familiar with
Java development to review PRs or answer
questions in the issue tracker. I obviously
volunteer, but more people is always the best.<br>
<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Create a new Git repository for the OSIS
specification</b>.<br>
Must contain :</li>
<ul>
<li>In Git, the OSIS XSD schema, and the
functional specification (basically, the
contents of the current manual) in markdown or
asciidoc format.<br>
So that contributions to the standard may be
opened as pull requests, reviewed, potentially
stored as separate branches, etc.<br>
</li>
<li>A wiki tab where all relevant OSIS-related
resources from the crosswire wiki should be
copied.<br>
<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li>Ideally, I'd also suggest <b>moving the C++
sword code to github</b>.<br>
Having it only on <a
href="https://crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">an old
SVN repo</a>, not browsable or searchable
online, really harms its visibility. I used a
little bit of SVN while in engineering school 12
years ago, but I doubt that most young devs
nowadays even know about it.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>But for this last C++ part, I suspect it has bigger
impact on current developers, since Troy is still
actively developing it and using the Jira bugtracker
for this part - so there is no urgent need to change.<br>
I'm really more worried about the jsword repo (it
breaks my heart to see it dead since 2019) and having
a visible and versioned location for the OSIS
standard.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Please let me know your thoughts !<br>
And whoever is currently admin of the github project,
would you be willing to grant me some permissions on
the jsword repo and a new "osis-spec" repo to start
setting up all of this ?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Regards,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Arnaud Vié</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
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