[osis-editors] Re: [sword-devel] WEB update request (fwd)

[Troy A. Griffitts]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 10:54:20 -0400
From: DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
To: SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
Subject: Re: [sword-devel] WEB update request

I'll give my 2 cents regarding quotation markup. I have over 14 years of 
experience in Electronic Publishing. So my comments come from professional 
experience in non-theological works.

1) The language of a document may differ from the language of the reader. The 
text of the document needs to be preserved in the language of the document.

2) Text should not be buried as an attribute of an element, but may be repeated 
there. This allows for text to be presented w/o using the markup for 
presentation. That is, just dumping all the text elements in the order they 
appear.
<date calendar="Gregorian" year="2004" month="2" day="5">5-2-04</date>
<money unit="talent">5</money>

3) Markup can be used as an assist to help a reader understand data in the 
text. It can also be used as an assist to help software understand content.

4) The intellectual property (IP) of a writer may include document 
presentation. There need to be markup to preserve IP. If this is not done in 
OSIS, then OSIS cannot be used as an authoring markup and the editorial master 
of a document will not be kept in OSIS.

With regard to quotation marks:
These are language elements not merely typographical presentation elements. 
They frequently differ from language to language and frequently the begin quote 
and the end quote are different. Some languages have more than one type of 
quote and may have complex rules as to when to use them. But when it comes down 
to it, writers often ignore rules and use whatever marks they wish.

Quotation marks may be IP elements. A writer may use them to indicate different 
kinds of information. While not religious works, we have all seen books that 
explain typographic elements at the beginning of a book. Things like bold, 
italic, font styling, boxing. I have seen explanations of double quotes, « », ' 
',  , ...

Quotation marks do not always come in pairs and can span other container 
elements. Example is Jeremiah 42:7-22 in NIV. Verse 9 begins a quote that 
continues to the end of the chapter. Verse 10-12 are a quote w/in a quote. 
Verses 7, 13, and 19 begin paragraphs. Verses 13 and 19 begin with unpaired 
quotation marks. (There is a lot more going on here wrt quotes, but this is 
enough to present an example).

I would suggest markup like one of these
(Chevrons are used for quotes):
a) <q sID="x">«</q>Quoted text<q eID="x">»</q>
By adding the mark to the milestone, it extends the OSIS. However, I think that 
this is not good as it changes the meaning of a milestone element to a 
container element, even if it is just text. And this does not handle unpaired 
quotation marks.

b) <q marked="true">«Quoted Text»</q>
An attribute value is needed to distinguish from the current standard.
While this is simple, it does not handle unpaired quotation marks.

c) <q><qm>«</qm>Quoted Text<qm>»</qm></q>
A separate element preserves the current definition of OSIS and allows for <q> 
w/o <qm> as children or adjacent siblings to be treated as they are today. XSLT 
can be used to ignore <qm> and the results will be as in the standard today, 
i.e. text w/o quotation marks.





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