[osis-editors] Fwd: Re: The death of OSIS?

[Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson]

Just in case you missed this important feedback on the Sword developer's collaboration forum:

>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:12:12 -0400
>From: DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>
>To: "SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum" <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
>Subject: Re: [osis-editors] Re: [sword-devel] The death of OSIS?
>
>       I have the same concern in helping to develop JSword. I don't want to 
>have language/locale specific processing of the Bible. It is best left 
>up to language experts that create the Bible translation in the first place.
>
>       I also think that OSIS should be robust enough preserve all visible 
>jots and tittles of the original work. That is, OSIS should be 
>sufficient to become an "editorial master" of the original work.
>
>       The problem that I have with a header element is a general issue I have 
>with putting control information into primary data: it would need to 
>exist in a well published location of the Bible (i.e. OSIS schema) so it 
>could be found. We would need to do this at least once per OSIS bible 
>and would need to pass it along to XSLT when rendering the text.
>
>       Of course, Sword could pull it out and put it into the conf where it 
>maintains the other control information.
>
>       With regard to quotes, are there only two levels of quoting? Can't 
>there be more? Kind of a I said, "that she said, 'that he said, <I did it>'"
>
>       Also, when/if we get to books like Kittles where there are many 
>languages, each with their own quotation system, we would need to set 
>quotation rendering for each change of language. Or do the simpler 
>approach of embedding the quotation directly in the text.
>
>       What if we get a devotional or commentary that quotes the NIV, the 
>Message, NASB, Die Heilige Schrift, ..., doesn't it need to preserve the 
>quotation marks of each of these?
>
>       If we have a parallel work of arbitrary Bibles how would the quotations 
>be rendered? (In the JSword we create an OSIS document for the requested 
>passage and render it w/ XSLT, and we plan to present 
>parallel/interlinear passages).
>
>       I think that the simplest and most straightforward means of answering 
>any of these questions is to allow quotation marks directly in the text. 
>And perhaps mark them such that a system that does not want to render 
>the original as it is provided can strip them out or modify them as desired.
>
>DM
>
>Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
>> Patrick,
>>     I understand Michael's point.  On a few occasions I have voiced a 
>> concern regarding <q>/" rendering, for a little different, more selfish 
>> reason, but haven't pressed the issue too much:
>> 
>>     As a developer of software for rendering OSIS texts, I do NOT want 
>> to be forced to have a language expert on staff that encorporates all 
>> diverse QUOTE rendering logic for each language we support, into our 
>> software.
>> 
>>     ie. I don't want my software to have to know how a Spanish Bible 
>> expects its quotes to be rendered, just because it is Spanish.
>> 
>>     I wouldn't get it right for Spanish, much less for any of a hundred 
>> other languages I've never heard of.
>> 
>>     There NEEDS to be a programmatic way to derive the rendering of 
>> quote marks simply, and without software variation based on the language.
>> 
>>     I would suggest a heading element similar to
>> 
>> <renderQ render="true" open1='"' open2="'" openContinuation1='"' 
>> openContinuation2="'" />
>> 
>>     (please ignore symantics of above suggestion, but understand what it 
>> is attempting to supply)
>> 
>>     MPJ could simply specify <renderQ render="false">, then use <q 
>> who="Jesus"> to mark all the quote containers he wishes, and use ",' and 
>> whatever else he wants in his doc.  (This is probably how I would prefer 
>> quotes, as well, at the expense of the Theoretical Publisher who wishes 
>> to change his rendered quote style for each edition of his text.)
>> 
>> 
>>     Preserving original document quote content is also a concern, but my 
>> overwhelming desire for this is to relieve the burden for myself to 
>> actually KNOW OR CARE how all languages of the world render their quotes.
>> 
>>         -Troy.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Patrick Durusau wrote:
>> 
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> As one of the principals in the OSIS project I must confess I an not 
>>> encouraged by statements announcing the illness or death of OSIS.
>>>
>>> I realize that I have not always been as prompt as I would like in 
>>> answering suggestions/complaints but that is a reflection on my time 
>>> management and not the viability of the OSIS standard.
>>>
>>> Rather than simply taking shots from the cheap seats, perhaps you 
>>> would like to suggest markup based solutions to any problems you 
>>> encounter with OSIS?
>>>
>>> Note that I said markup solutions, realizing that most of the problems 
>>> that have been brought to my attention involve presentation, which is 
>>> NOT something markup is intended to cover. Seems unfair to blame OSIS 
>>> for something markup was never intended to do.
>>>
>>> If you want absolute control over appearance you need to use 
>>> Postscript, PDF, Word or TeX as your Bible format. See how portable 
>>> that will be across platforms or into other formats. (Well, with the 
>>> exception of TeX but it is not widely supported.)
>>>
>>> Actually markup can handle presentation as well, but only as part of 
>>> the transformation process, such as XSL-FO, but that is not covered by 
>>> OSIS.
>>>
>>> So, rather than posturing with negative statements about OSIS, how 
>>> about making constructive suggestions? I am in the last stages of a 
>>> new version of the users manual and could use constructive suggestions.
>>>
>>> Hope you are having a great day!
>>>
>>> Patrick
>>>
>>> Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:
>>>
>>>> At 16:18 11-08-04, Chris Little wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. OSIS does not properly preserve quotation punctuation in all 
>>>>>> cases, as 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> currently documented. Furthermore, the keepers of the standard don't 
>>>>> seem to think that quotation punctuation is important to preserve, 
>>>>> but they seem to believe that such punctuation should always be 
>>>>> generated from markup according to modern English rules of grammar, 
>>>>> independent of the way the translators punctuated their work. 
>>>>> Therefore, it is impossible to code a Bible translation in OSIS that 
>>>>> differs in the way quotations are punctuated and expect that OSIS 
>>>>> readers and renderers will render the quotation punctuation 
>>>>> correctly. Just ignoring the <q> tag doesn't work if you want to 
>>>>> mark text for possible use in a "red letter" edition.
>>>>>
>>>>> We've covered this a great deal, including downsides to your 
>>>>> suggestions.  The best solution will probably lie in identifying, 
>>>>> presumably in the header or on each <q> element, the rendered form. 
>>>>> Encoding quotation marks directly is just not a good solution.  If 
>>>>> you're willing to entertain the possibility that others who have 
>>>>> opinions differing from your own just might have good ideas too, you 
>>>>> can re-read the previous threads in sword-devel or the discussions 
>>>>> in osis-core (I think it is publicly archived).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have never gotten a satisfactory response to my objections. 
>>>> Granted, I haven't seen everything in sword-devel, and I didn't read 
>>>> any discussion about that in osis-core. I tried to find the archive, 
>>>> but could not find it on my first attempt. A direct pointer (URL) 
>>>> would be appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> I am quite willing to entertain the possibility that others with 
>>>> differing opinions might have good ideas, too. I am not willing to 
>>>> use a Bible interchange format that systematically allows for 
>>>> corruption of the punctuation or that always enforces English rules 
>>>> of punctuation.
>>>>
>>>> I can easily live with identifying the rendered form of each 
>>>> quotation punctuation mark in each <q> element, provided that I can 
>>>> put a <q> element everywhere that a quotation punctuation mark should 
>>>> be, including opening punctuation mark reminders at paragraph and 
>>>> stanza beginnings. It doesn't have to be elegant. It doesn't have to 
>>>> be implemented the way I want it. It just has to work and it has to 
>>>> be included in a way that works in the standard.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> OSIS was designed with at least one principle in common with Perl: 
>>>>> "Common things should be easy; advanced things should at least be 
>>>>> possible."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I like that philosophy. I may differ in my opinion of how well this 
>>>> was implemented. I would have considered rendering the words and 
>>>> punctuation, including quotation marks (whichever quotation marks are 
>>>> used in the target language and style of the translation in 
>>>> question), of Bible text to be a common thing that should be easy. I 
>>>> also think that verse marking -- probably the most common thing done 
>>>> in Bible texts -- would be easier, but that is a minor nit.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> 5. OSIS expects a lot of metadata not found in many existing Scripture 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> texts to be added to it to comply with higher levels of conformance. 
>>>>> This may slow or prevent the conversion of some texts to OSIS.
>>>>>
>>>>> No one expects every document to conform to the highest levels of 
>>>>> conformance.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, but even the lowest level of conformance excludes the best OSIS 
>>>> I could generate for the World English Bible, primarily because of 
>>>> the quotation marking issue. The fact that you consider that level of 
>>>> OSIS to be unacceptable for direct reading by the Sword Project is, 
>>>> to me, an indicator that OSIS itself is inadequate in its current form.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> I think there is more support than you know of.  Again, just because 
>>>>> no one bothered to tell you about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  
>>>>> I believe an OSIS document was used earlier this year as the basis 
>>>>> for a new Bible's first printing.  There are applications for 
>>>>> editing, converting, rendering, and reading OSIS documents.  And 
>>>>> there are around a dozen fully marked OSIS Bibles that I know of 
>>>>> (and that excludes all of CCEL's documents that are converted by 
>>>>> stylesheet and CrossWire's documents converted by exporters).
>>>>>
>>>>> The rumors of OSIS' death are greatly exaggerated.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Maybe... but the jury is still out.
>>>>
>>>> I guess what I'm really saying is that the patient needs some care. 
>>>> It may die, or it may just be crippled. Now is a critical time in 
>>>> OSIS' life. Maybe nobody cares if I use or support OSIS. Maybe nobody 
>>>> cares about little details like preserving quotation marks.
>>>>
>>>> Sometimes you have to make some noise to see if the patient is dead 
>>>> or deaf...
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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