As I understand, for now the only way to tag documents conformant with 
OSIS is by hand (manually) or with a comercially available xml editor..... .

What is this osisCore.2.0.1 schema for then? Is there a command line 
tool to use it with?
Does it provide any feature for authoring modules? It is so much pain to 
insert tags manually, it is error prone (even more so than with a DTD - 
so much abhored by the OSIS people). Human eye cannot validate a 
document... I really feel dejected with searching for even a slightest 
help from a 2.6 Ghz computer to allow for some automation in all this.

I am against using Emacs because it is an overkill (besides, it doesn't 
work with schemas), it is a religion in itself:-) I don't want to change 
my religion just now, only to tag a document for it to be OSIS compliant.

So after investingating for a couple of weeks the above issue I 
contacted Quanta team. Someone even told me how to prepare a special 
tagXML file for Quanta. Let me brief you on this:
===========================
On Sunday 23 May 2004 19:22, Benedykt P. Barszcz wrote:

 >> Hi list,
 >> I am interested in using quanta for editing XML texts that are valid
 >> against osisCore.2.0.1.xsd.
 >> Of course autocompletion of tags and contextual editing with quanta
 >> would be a nice addition to the pleasure...
 >>
 >> Is it difficult? I am not a programmer, though.
 >>  From what I observed so far is that quanta uses tagXML files for
 >> this kind of stuff. Are there any automatic converters of *.xsd into
 >> tagXML files available?


I don't know anything about XSD. But if you have a DTD definition
(.dtd), that can be easily translated to tagXML which you can later
finetune. About the description.rc files we have a document in the CVS
(and the source tarballs) called dtd-description.txt. The tagXML is
described somewhere in the help, I think. If you have questions, ask.

Andras
============================


My voice here is a cry for help from the osisCore team, so that we, non 
techies, can write modules, and enjoy working with theological/biblical 
materials.

Benedict

Benedykt

Do not feel dejected - tools will be available for you to use in the future.
Everything cannot be done at once. First the spec has to be written, tested
and amended in the light of experience. Only when this is fully shaken down
can tool writers start to write tools to use the spec.

Your current frustrations are inevitable if you want to be working at the
cutting edge of new developments. I know - I have been there all my life.

Maybe you should stop and ask if OSIS is right for you now? Why is it so
important for you to use it today and not next year? It takes time to
develop the supporting systems - and maybe you are trying to run when
everyone else is still working out how to walk properly?

But people have started writing tools. Have you tried the Word macros? I
have no personal experience of using them - but that is one option.

I am writing a text editor for Wycliffe Associates Scripture keyboarders to
use which hides every single tag. I have been working on this in my spare
time for over a year now and it is not quite ready for field testing. It
only uses the sub-set of OSIS which WA find necessary for keying scriptures
- but it is in development. You would be welcome to have a copy - when it is
field tested - but, as I say, it is designed for a very specific
requirement.

I am sure your problems will be solved in time.

The good news is that the more the number of people out there chomping at
the bit to get going with OSIS the greater the motivation for tool writers
to finish their work.

We live in a day when everyone wants everything instantly. It may be a very
old fashioned idea - but patience really is a virtue.

I hope this helps

Maurice

-----Original Message-----
From: Benedykt P. Barszcz [mailto:kb2qzv(at)poczta.wp.pl] 
Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2004 9:51 AM
To: osis-user(at)whi.wts.edu
Subject: [osis-user] could anyone review the options once more, pls?


As I understand, for now the only way to tag documents conformant with 
OSIS is by hand (manually) or with a comercially available xml editor..... .

What is this osisCore.2.0.1 schema for then? Is there a command line 
tool to use it with?
Does it provide any feature for authoring modules? It is so much pain to 
insert tags manually, it is error prone (even more so than with a DTD - 
so much abhored by the OSIS people). Human eye cannot validate a 
document... I really feel dejected with searching for even a slightest 
help from a 2.6 Ghz computer to allow for some automation in all this.

I am against using Emacs because it is an overkill (besides, it doesn't 
work with schemas), it is a religion in itself:-) I don't want to change 
my religion just now, only to tag a document for it to be OSIS compliant.

So after investingating for a couple of weeks the above issue I 
contacted Quanta team. Someone even told me how to prepare a special 
tagXML file for Quanta. Let me brief you on this:
=========================== On Sunday 23 May 2004 19:22, Benedykt P. Barszcz
wrote:

 >> Hi list,
 >> I am interested in using quanta for editing XML texts that are valid 
>>
against osisCore.2.0.1.xsd.  >> Of course autocompletion of tags and
contextual editing with quanta  >> would be a nice addition to the
pleasure...  >>  >> Is it difficult? I am not a programmer, though.
 >>
From what I observed so far is that quanta uses tagXML files for  >> this
kind of stuff. Are there any automatic converters of *.xsd into  >>
tagXML
files available?


I don't know anything about XSD. But if you have a DTD definition (.dtd),
that can be easily translated to tagXML which you can later finetune. About
the description.rc files we have a document in the CVS (and the source
tarballs) called dtd-description.txt. The tagXML is described somewhere in
the help, I think. If you have questions, ask.

Andras
============================


My voice here is a cry for help from the osisCore team, so that we, non 
techies, can write modules, and enjoy working with theological/biblical 
materials.

Benedict

[...]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2004, Benedykt P. Barszcz wrote:
[...]

I've encoded many, many OSIS documents and I have never encoded any of 
them by hand (except for a few occasional corrections to source 
documents).

If you are writing a document from scratch, you will probably be happiest 
with something like the Word 2003 macros.

If you are tagging an existing document, assuming it has some kind of 
markup already present, you should write a script in Perl or another good 
string processing language.
 [...]

A schema is a formal definition (to the extent possible), in a
standardized syntax, of a valid document.  You can use it to validate a 
document claiming to be OSIS-compliant (again, to the extent that XML 
Schema allows, since some details of compliance had to be expressed in the 
manual).
[...]

Sun has a Multi-Schema Validator.  Apache has Xerces.
[...]

No, it is a definition of valid documents.  Authoring tools could 
potentially USE a schema to assist in the creation of valid documents, 
through.
[...]

Schema is no more error prone than DTDs.  That statement just doesn't make 
any sense.  Schemas lead to fewer errors than DTDs because they can more 
accurately express a valid OSIS document.  If we composed the best 
possible DTD, based on the Schema, it would identify many, many types of 
errors to go unnoticed, that a Schema-based validator would catch.  And 
that's exactly WHY DTDs are much abhored by the OSIS people.
[...]

If you find someone who has written XML authoring or validation who has 
never even HEARD OF XML Schema, I stongly recommend not using their 
software.

--Chris