Hello OSIS community,

I have been reading up on the OSIS 2 User Manual. I
have some questions regarding how to markup textual
variants in manuscripts for comparative study of
manuscripts.

I found out that the <note type="variant"> element is
meant to mark up textual variants. But one thing that
I have not understood is that how will the <note>
element define what parts of the text the textual
variant applies to. For example, if I am marking up a
text such as:

<verse..> Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe <note
type="variant">King of the Worlds</note></verse>

What is meant above is that "King of the Worlds" is a
textual variant for "Lord of the Universe", but not
the whole verse. How can the range of text that the
textual variant applies to be defined?

There may be other examples where the textual variant
applies to only one word. For example, instead of the
above, we could say:

<verse..> Praise be to God, Lord <note
type="variant">King</note> of the Universe></verse>

In the example above, the textual variant only applies
to the word "Lord" not the whole verse.

There may be more complex examples where there are
multiple textual variants for one piece of text. For
instance:

<verse..> Praise be to God, Lord <note
type="variant">King</note><note
type="variant">Master</note> of the Universe></verse>

I would appreciate it if you could help me mark up
these kinds of cases. I am new to OSIS so I have not
yet grasped all the concepts.

Thank you very much,
Mete



=====
Happiness is submission to God alone!
-----
http://www.submission.org

Mete,

<note> has an osisRef attribute that is used to indicate the text the
note applies to.

So in your example:
<verse sID="X" osisID="Ps.33.3"> Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe
<note type="variant"
osisRef="Ps.33.3(at)s[Lord]-Ps.33.3(at)Universe]">King of
the Worlds</note><verse eID="X">

You can also have an alternant reading which is similar:
<verse sID="X" osisID="Ps.33.3"> Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe
<note type="variant"
osisRef="Ps.33.3(at)s[Lord]-Ps.33.3(at)Universe]"><catchWord>Lord of
the
Universe</catchWord><rgd>King of the
Worlds</rdg></note><verse eID="X">

(I made up the Ps reference for the example.)

Todd
[...]

Thank you Todd. Wow, OSIS seems to be very powerful
indeed. Is this kind of referencing:
osisRef="Ps.33.3(at)s[Lord]-Ps.33.3(at)Universe]"
really part of OSIS. I mean, can you reference
specific words within verses by just doing
verse-ref[word]?? If it is so, I'm quite impressed.
Which part of the user manual explains this kind of
referencing? (I'm still only 20-30% through the
documentation.

Another question that I have: I read the section about
milestoneable verse elements today. This would be
useful for recording multiple versification schemes in
one OSIS file. But we have a little different
situation. We want to be able to record variant verse
breaks, but in our case the variants are far and few
in between. Since using regular <verse>...</verse>
style verse elements is better for later processing,
we don't want to use milestone-style verses to markup
the whole text. But yet we want to be able to mark up
those far and few in between versification variants.
For examples, once in a while we may have a situation
where:

<verse ...>Praise be to GOD, <verse sID=../> Lord of
the Universe</verse>
<verse>Master of <verse eID=../>the Day of
Judgment</verse>

Can we do the above where by default regular verse
elements are used, but rarely milestonable verse
elements are used to record the variant verse breaks?
We need to also somehow distinguish between the
default verse breakups and the variant verse breakups
so they don't get mixed up with each other. Do you
have a suggestion on how to do this?

Thank you,
Mete



--- Todd Tillinghast <todd(at)contentframeworks.com>
wrote:
[...]


=====
Happiness is submission to God alone!
-----
http://www.submission.org

Mete,

If you are going to have paragraphs that overlap verses (which is very
common if there are paragraphs present) you MUST use verse milestones.
If this is the case you will exclusively be using verse milestones.

Example:
<osis>
   <osisText>
      <div type="book">
	    <chapter osisID="Gen.1" sID="Gen.1"/>
          .....
          <chapter osisID="Gen.49" sID="Gen.49"/>
          <div type="section">
             <p>text of the paragraph that starts chapter 49
                ....
                <verse osisID="Gen.49.27" sID="Gen.49.27"/> some text
...
             </p>
          <div/>		    
          <div type="section">
             <p>some text <verse eID="Gen.49.27"/> text of the
paragraph
and then the start of chapter 50 in the middle of the paragraph <verse
eID="Gen.49.33"/>
                <chapter eID="Gen.49"/>
                <chapter osisID="Gen.50" sID="Gen.50"/>
                <verse osisID="Gen.50.1" sID="Gen.50.1"/>
                The rest of the <verse eID="Gen.50.1"/><verse
osisID="Gen.50.2" sID="Gen.50.2"/> paragraph
             </p>
         <div> <!-- close the section -->
          <div type="section"> <!-- this section continues chapter 50
-->
             <p>text of the paragraph and then the rest of chapter 50
                The rest of the paragraph with opening and closing
verses
                <verse eID="Gen.50.26"/>
             </p>
         <div> <!-- close the section -->
         <chapter eID="Gen.50"/>
      </div> <!-- close the book -->
   </osisText>
</osis>

However if you are encoding a simple Bible text with only
book/chapter/verse then you can do:
<osis>
   <osisText>
      <div type="book">
	    <chapter osisID="Gen.1">
             <verse osisID="Gen.1.1">
             </verse>
             <verse osisID="Gen.1.2">
             </verse>
             ...
          </chapter>
	    <chapter osisID="Gen.50">
             <verse osisID="Gen.50.1">
             </verse>
             <verse osisID="Gen.50.2">
             </verse>
             ...
          </chapter>      
      </div> <!-- close the book -->
   </osisText>
</osis>

Note:  I have left out a lot of attributes, the <header> etc... to make
the example smaller and more readable.

Note: sID and eID can be ANY string but must be unique for each pair.
As a convention I use the osisID for books, chapters and verses.

Can you provide a bit more detail regarding the translation you are
marking up?  Is it simply B/C/V or does it have sections, paragraphs,
etc...?

In general I would suggest that you use verse milestones in almost every
case.

Also I would strongly suggest that you either use all <verse> containers
or use all <verse> milestones.  People using your XML encoding will
thank you for consistency.

Also for multiple reference systems you can declare to <work> elements
and use the osisWork attribute as a prefix to the reference.  <verse
osisID="Ps.42.1 heb:Ps.42.2"/> or even <verse osisID="Ps.42.1
heb:Ps.42.2.a"/>.

Todd
[...]

Hello Todd,

Thank you for the examples. It was very useful.
[...]

The above seems like a good way to mark up for our
application. We do not really have a need to have
paragraphs overlapping verses.
[...]

We are actually encoding the Quran. The Quran has the
same basica B/C/V structure that the books of the
Bible has. Additionally there is only one
versification scheme. Although we are doing some
research on variant verse cut-offs which happen very
rarely. I read in the OSIS Manual that versifications
that differ from a traditional versification scheme
only slightly should not be considered as a seperate
versification scheme. This would apply to the Quran.
It is possible to see very rare divergent verse
cut-offs in some manuscripts so following the advice
in the OSIS Manual these wouldn't be considered a
seperate versification scheme but rather slight
variations from the main versification scheme. I also
read that OSIS is preparing an XML schema to keep
track of these versification variations in print
editions that slightly diverge from a traditional
versification scheme. I am curious to know more about
this XML schema. Any estimates on when a draft might
be ready? If that will take a long time, what would
you recommend that we could to record slightly variant
versifications  in OSIS? Using two or more
versification schemes in one document seems to get a
little messy and also I prefer the non-milestone verse
tags. But we need to somehow record these rarely
divergent versification instances. Should we do this
by marking up a <note type="variant"> note or do you
have a better suggestion?

Thank you very much,
Mete


--- Todd Tillinghast <todd(at)contentframeworks.com>
wrote:
[...]


=====
Happiness is submission to God alone!
-----
http://www.submission.org