On 12/04/13 13:57, John Austin wrote:
You didn't address my main point: Content providers should be given a way to have final control over how their formatted texts appear, and one which is simple and reliable.
If they want to do so, they should use different format than OSIS or any other honest XML format (yes, maybe that document could be generated from the OSIS one, but the formatting shouldn't be encoded in OSIS every).
But often content providers do rightly desire their texts to appear with formatting similar to their printed texts, since this is exactly what the translators deemed easiest to read and understand.
Yes, then they should use software which is adequate to their goals. But this has absolutely nothing with the way how the document should be recorded in the OSIS. I am sorry, if I am too harsh, but it seems that the SWORD project is already slipping on this dangerous slippery path towards making its products useless for its intended purpose (long time record of the Biblical texts for any possible purpose), so I want to make this point very very clear. Really, please, educate yourself and google for "xml separation of content and presentation". The main point is that any illusion that you know how the document should be rendered is just that, an illusion. You said "printed text", but how do you know that the Bible text will be printed at all?How should I know when running the document through speech generator how should I present in voice an element <milestone type="x-p-indent" />? Does the indentation matters or not? Perhaps I can ignore it, but maybe you wanted to mark something really important by it, which I shouldn't ignore. How should I know?
How do you know how the text will be presented in twenty years ... will it be possible/desirable to indent text on whatever-will-come-after-iPad?
Perhaps you wanted to say that this is a start of the chapter, or that you are recording dialog and you want to mark different partners in dialog by indentation, or perhaps something else. Then please do record that (<p class="dialog-reply"> or <p class="first-in-chapter">), but never ever include the presentation oriented codes into the text. If we want to have OSIS documents be relevant for long time, and not one-time-use throwaway ones (for which there are other formats ... MS Word, Adobe PageMaker, PDF, etc.) then IMNSHO we should be absolutely vigilant against any proposals like this. Blessings, Matěj -- http://www.ceplovi.cz/matej/, Jabber: [email protected] GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB 25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
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