[osis-editors] OSIS on trial

[Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson]

I think Mr. Smith may have expressed my concerns with the OSIS handling of quotation punctuation better than I did. Please read it carefully, as heeding this could have a major impact on the acceptance or rejection of OSIS.

>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 10:54:20 -0400
>From: DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>
>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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