On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Rev. Michael Paul Johnson wrote:
> At 10:39 10-01-03 -0700, Chris Little wrote:
> >OSIS handles everything on Michael's list, though some items are not
> >addressed specifically (such as poetry/prose formatting, which would be
> >done with style sheets).
>
> Poetry/prose formatting cannot be done properly just with style sheets.
> To accurately represent a translation like the WEB or NIV that presents
> text in poetry and prose format, you must be able to mark every section
> as poetry or prose. In prose, you must mark paragraphs, and in poetry,
> you also need to be able to distinguish between initial and subsequent
> verses of poetry line sets. In GBF, this is done with <Pp>, <PP>, <CM>,
> and <CL> tags. In XSEM, this is done with <p>, <linegroup>, and <line>
> tags. In SIL SF, this is done with \p, \q, and \q2 tags. I am
> disappointed that so many Bible study software packages simply discard
> this information. The result is ugly poetry that often looks like it has
> many capitalization errors in it.
Okay, OSIS does address "formatting" to this extent, but these aren't
display formatting, strictly speaking, but marking of text units. OSIS
has <p>, <lg>, and <l> tags corresponding to <p>, <linegroup>, and <line>
from XSEM. However, <lg>/<l> may be used in marking either poetic lines
or orthographic lines.
What do you mean "orthographic lines"? Why are they not distinguished from poetry lines?
It sounds like OSIS may be adequate for simple Bible texts, anyway, in that it can mark the logical structure of poetry and prose. I'll take a closer look at it.
Display formatting details, such as alignment, indentation, spacing
between lines/paragraphs, etc. would all need to be handled with
stylesheets using attributes such as type in OSIS. This includes marking
different types of lines to define their degree or type of indentation.
It is a good thing to separate the details of display from the logical structure of the text. This makes it easier to adapt the same text to different display devices and column widths. My concern is that the logical structure of the text not be oversimplified, losing information necessary to do the proper formatting.
Servant of Jesus Christ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://eBible.org/mpj/
