-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 00:22 05-02-04, Chris Little wrote: >Michael Paul Johnson wrote: >> American Standard Version http://eBible.org/asv/asvosis.zip >> God's Living Word http://eBible.org/glw/glwosis.zip >> Hebrew Names Version http://eBible.org/hnv/hnvosis.zip >> King James Version http://eBible.org/kjv/kjvosis.zip >> Melanesian Pidgin http://eBible.org/pdg/TokPisinOSIS.zip >> World English Bible http://eBible.org/web/webosis.zip > >Looks good. I saw just a few issues that need some correction. The >most important is that <verse> eID's need a value matching the >preceding >sID on another <verse> element. I think this is the only issue that >actually violates the spec.
Oops! Sorry about that. I have corrected the error in my source code that did that, and will be uploading updates when I can. (I'm trying not to be envious of broadband Internet connections available all over the USA & other more developed nations.) Of course, this does bring up a question. Should overlapping verses ever be allowed? I would hope not, but the syntax would seem to allow it. Perhaps something should be said in the documentation about that. Actually, the content of sID and eID markers on verse elements are entirely redundant (assuming you don't overlap verses), but someone might actually look at them, so I would rather have them be useful. My intention was to make them the same as the osisID of the first verse of the verse bridge set (which is the only verse in the case of most normal verses), as you suggested. >Aside from that: >The book <div> elements should have an osisID attribute where you >used >scope. I'll add an osisID attribute to those and leave the scope. Redundancy is obviously not a problem in OSIS. I rather think it is regarded as a virtue. <grin> >The code for English is "en". You can use "ENG" in the <language >type="SIL"> element, however. (This isn't yet clear from the manual, >of >course, but I expect the final version of the manual will cover this >area adequately.) I did use "en" for English texts in <osisText osisIDWork="WEB" osisRefWork="Bible" xml:lang="en">, but since I am most interested in minority languages without two-letter codes, I'd prefer to stick with the SIL Ethnologue codes wherever practical. For now, "ENG" is good in the language element. The type is supplied, so it is not ambiguous. If I nudge people towards supporting Ethnologue language codes, that would be a good thing. >Various other issues, like the format of the <identifier >type="OSIS">, >are in flux, and will probably be defined in OSIS 2.1 or the final >manual. (My current best guess at the value >"Bible.en.Rainbow_Ministries.WEB.2004-01-22".) Actually, that should be "Rainbow_Missions" instead of "Rainbow_Ministries" for the publisher name. That is easy to adjust, as it is just a constant in the GBF -> OSIS converter code. >> If you care to alter the <q> marker and quote marks to strictly >> comply >> with the OSIS 2 documentation, then you face the following >> difficulties: >> >> 1. You MUST provide additional information outside of the OSIS >> standard to the users of OSIS text that allows the punctuation to >> be >> EXACTLY recreated as in the original text. The rules of this >> recreation and the exact markers used are different for different >> languages, different dialects, and even for different translations >> within the same dialect. They aren't even the same for all of the >> texts above. If you use the <q> marks in the KJV to generate red >> text, >> that is OK, but if you generate quotation marks, you are changing >> the >> text. The KJV has no quotation marks, nor does the ASV. > >I was sympathetic with this position, since it really does make >conversion from other formats easier, but using <q> is undeniably >better. I still deny that it is better. I remain unconvinced that use of <q> to generate punctuation should be mandatory. Maybe I just don't like computer geeks telling linguists & Bible translators what to do. Maybe I have some valid reasons that you should consider. I do concede that it is good to allow <q> to be used to generate quotation marks where it makes sense -- and in some places it makes lots of sense. I still disagree that it should be mandatory. I might want to use this feature if I were drafting an entirely new translation in OSIS (or something that converted more directly to OSIS, which is more likely), and if I had software in hand to insert the quotation marks the way they should go for this language and style. I still think that once that insertion was done, I would prefer to distribute the resulting text with quotation marks already generated, and <q> tags, if present, serving only to indicate who the speaker was. That way OSIS readers don't have to know all language & style rules pertaining to punctuation for every language (not likely to happen, really), and OSIS doesn't have to be extended to specify all of these rules. >It is true that different language, dialects, and translations use >different standards of placing quotation marks. However, there are >also >plenty of instances when the SAME translation demonstrates different >standards of placing quotation marks, depending on locale, >paragraphing, >and contemporary standards. This is part of why OSIS requires >marking >with <q> rather than typographic quotation marks. This is NOT a benefit. Rather it is a serious defect in OSIS. The reason it is a defect is that there is no way to unambiguously specify how quotation marks must be generated for each language, and if variants are allowed, then how. As a Bible publisher, I don't like this. As a Bible translator, this bothers me. It takes control of the punctuation away from the translators and publishers. It provides more opportunities to make mistakes. Making reliable software is hard enough. As a computer geek, I think it is cool that I could change the way quotation marks are rendered. I could render the NIV in verse list format with quotation mark reminders starting at every verse like the NASB, or render the NASB like the NIV. I could force English punctuation rules on Spanish or Italian, or vice versa. When extracting a scripture passage from the middle of a quotation, punctuation could be adjusted to fit the quotation (i. e. putting quotation marks around one of the Beatitudes when that is all you quote). The first option is great if you ARE the publisher. If you aren't, then I have a gut feeling that it is a good way to further alienate IBS & Zondervan from us. (They consider the poetry & prose formatting a translational issue not to be mucked with by the computer geeks.) The second option is totally without practical merit, and is really a disadvantage. The third option may be useful, but it would be a problem if you extracted adjacent sections of Scripture, then concatenated them. The bottom line is that until I am convinced that proper punctuation will ALWAYS be reconstituted by OSIS-compliant software, and that OSIS itself provides enough information to do that for EVERY language, dialect, and style variant, I will not support this feature of OSIS as a mandatory item, nor will I recommend that anyone else does that. If you want to make it optional, and if you allow me to tag who is making a quotation without generating punctuation, then I would be happy with that. > (Another benefit is >the potential for more richly tagged text, with speaker information.) This can be a benefit, when it is done. It can also be a royal pain to provide, and it isn't worth the effort of doing so for every translation. I suppose that for translations that are close enough to each other (i. e. based on the same source text and not too loosely paraphrased), you could use a clever program to transfer the speaker tags from one translation to another automatically. Better yet, maybe you could just do that as a separate database, and merge the information on demand in the display engine (i. e. in Sword). That would be better, and wouldn't require everyone to tag their Bibles that way. >> 2. If you scan a new Bible text that has correct quotation marks, >> you >> probably won't be able to fully automate conversion from those >> marks >> to <q> markup. >> >> 3. If you fail in doing 1 or 2, above, you may be in violation of >> copyright, trademark, and/or common law. Worse yet, you shift >> responsibility before God from the translators to yourself for the >> accurate transmission of His Word. > >Copyright, trademark, common law, aren't involved, though contract >law >might be (depending on your contract). I beg to differ. Copyright and contract law are combined with the GLW text, in that the text is copyrighted, but you have permission to do pretty much anything reasonable with it for free PROVIDED THAT you don't alter the text. Period. If you change the punctuation, you have altered the text, and therefore have no permission to make copies (beyond whatever "fair use" rights you might have, which are pretty limited these days). With the WEB & HNV, the text is in the Public Domain, but if you use the trademarked names, then you are bound to not alter the text as a condition of using the trademarked names. Otherwise, you have to call it something different. Again, this is a combination of trademark & contract law. In reality, I'm not very likely to sue anyone for screwing up the quotation marks in the GLW text, but I do have the legal right to do so. > Suggesting that you will somehow >have "responsibility before God" (unless you're intentionally >rendering >incorrectly) would be pretty ridiculous and implies that every >typesetter or translator who ever made a mistake while working on a >Bible (probably all of them) will be held responsible for those acts. It would be foolish to not be careful in dealing with God's Word, don't you think? No, I don't think God will strike everyone dead who makes an honest mistake, but I don't want to be one who intentionally mis-handles God's Word or takes it lightly. On the other hand, the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts had no quotation marks. We only put them in translations because the target languages require them. They are derived entirely from the context. In a few cases (especially in the Prophets), it is a judgement call as to where exactly the quotation marks should go. Therefore, I'm not going to make a holy war of this issue. Let your Holy-Spirit-sanctified conscience be your guide. >> The OSIS spec should be changed to allow separation of quotation >> mark >> generation markers from words of Jesus markers. > >We probably won't ever see that, precisely because there already >exists >a way to express this. Sure-- the way I did it. Just change the documentation to say that is OK. Alternatively, you could redefine <q> to always generate punctuation and <speech> to never generate punctuation, but allow either to specify who is speaking or writing. Both are milestoneable markers used for approximately the same thing, right now. >There also probably won't ever be anything akin to a note start >anchor, >since it can already be expressed. The first verse of the WEB reads: > ><verse sID="Gen.1.1" osisID="Gen.1.1" />In the beginning <milestone >type="x-noteStartAnchor" />God<note type="translation">After “God,” >the >Hebrew has the two letters “Aleph Tav” (the first and last letters of >the Hebrew alphabet) as a grammatical marker.</note> created the >heavens >and the earth.<verse eID="Gen.1.1" /> > >and could instead be encoded with a <catchWord> to indicate the >annotant >of the <note>: ... >or with an osisRef with a grain, to explicitly define the range of >the >annotant: ... Those approaches could work. They are quite contorted to my way of thinking, but you could spend many man-months making it work in OSIS generation, conversion, and display for HTML. Even for print, some printed Bibles use footnote start & end markers. A start marker would be MUCH easier to convert to HTML hyperlinks, don't you think? I'll probably never support those methods you suggest. I even cut corners in that I made no distinction between kinds of notes, because I don't distinguish between them in the source text format (GBF). Maybe if I ever used OSIS for a native Bible text format to start editing in, and if good quality conversions to HTML and other formats already existed, I might. Of course, only a hard-core computer geek would manually edit OSIS Scripture texts (i. e. for a new translation) with nothing but a text editor, so I'll wait to see if anyone generates a Scripture editor that generates OSIS text that is easier to use than the current alternatives. Don't get me wrong. I almost like OSIS. <grin> I love the idea of a good Scripture interchange format standard. OSIS seems to have more support than XSEM, and it is XML, unlike USFM, GBF, or the old STEP format. If I were starting from scratch, I would do some things differently, but at this point, I'd rather ride on your octagonal wheel than reinvent a round one. <grin> If I seem to whine a bit about it, I'm just trying to get you to round off some of the corners so that my passengers and I can have a smoother ride. Take it for what it is worth... ... I'll let you know when I have the (almost) OSIS texts updated & posted. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) Comment: http://eBible.org/mpj/gpg.htm iD8DBQFAIep0RI/gxxfXR7sRAjhKAKDz8OSB3LtSn85dup7i7L3ye7g45ACfZvfO QHkWqWHkSpSYZsb43+Gf3iA= =KhyB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
