Open Scripture Information Standard
Encyclopedia
Open Scripture Information Standard (OSIS) is an XML
application (or schema
), that defines tags for marking up
Bibles, theological commentaries, and other related literature.
The OSIS schema was developed by the Bible Technologies Group, a joint committee sponsored by the American Bible Society
and the Society of Biblical Literature
. Other participants in the standards work are the United Bible Societies
, the Summer Institute of Linguistics
, and various national Bible societies, along with individual expert volunteers. The officers include Steven DeRose
(chair), Kees DeBlois (vice-chair), and Patrick Durusau (editor). As of mid-2006, the current version is 2.1.1.
The schema is very similar to that of the Text Encoding Initiative
, though on the one hand much simpler (by omission of many unneeded constructs), and on the other hand adding much more detailed metadata
, and a formal canonical reference system to identify books, chapters, verses, and particular locations within verses.
The metadata includes a "work declaration" for the work itself, and for each work it references. A work declaration provides basic catalog information based on the Dublin Core
standard, and assigns a local short name for the work (similar to XML namespace
declarations).
OSIS gives particular attention to encoding overlapping markup, because Bibles exhibit such markup frequently, for example verses crossing paragraph boundaries and vice versa. The OSIS schema introduced a method for encoding overlap in XML, known as Trojan milestones, or "Clix". See these and other papers in Proceedings of the Extreme Markup and later Balisage
Conferences:
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
application (or schema
XML schema
An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...
), that defines tags for marking up
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...
Bibles, theological commentaries, and other related literature.
The OSIS schema was developed by the Bible Technologies Group, a joint committee sponsored by the American Bible Society
American Bible Society
The American Bible Society is an interconfessional, non-denominational, nonprofit organization, founded in 1816 in New York City, which publishes, distributes and translates the Bible and provides study aids and other tools to help people engage with the Bible.It is probably best known for its...
and the Society of Biblical Literature
Society of Biblical Literature
The Society of Biblical Literature, founded 1880, is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies , with the stated mission to "Foster Biblical Scholarship"...
. Other participants in the standards work are the United Bible Societies
United Bible Societies
The United Bible Societies is a worldwide association of Bible societies. In 1946 delegates from 13 countries formed the UBS, as an effort to coordinate the activities of the bible societies. The first headquarters were London and in Geneva...
, the Summer Institute of Linguistics
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
, and various national Bible societies, along with individual expert volunteers. The officers include Steven DeRose
Steven DeRose
Steven J DeRose is a computer scientist with a significant history of contributions to Computational Linguistics and to key standards related to document processing, mostly around ISO's Standard Generalized Markup Language and W3C's Extensible Markup Language .His contributions include the...
(chair), Kees DeBlois (vice-chair), and Patrick Durusau (editor). As of mid-2006, the current version is 2.1.1.
The schema is very similar to that of the Text Encoding Initiative
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
, though on the one hand much simpler (by omission of many unneeded constructs), and on the other hand adding much more detailed metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
, and a formal canonical reference system to identify books, chapters, verses, and particular locations within verses.
The metadata includes a "work declaration" for the work itself, and for each work it references. A work declaration provides basic catalog information based on the Dublin Core
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata terms are a set of vocabulary terms which can be used to describe resources for the purposes of discovery. The terms can be used to describe a full range of web resources: video, images, web pages etc and physical resources such as books and objects like artworks...
standard, and assigns a local short name for the work (similar to XML namespace
XML Namespace
xmlns tagged XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary...
declarations).
OSIS gives particular attention to encoding overlapping markup, because Bibles exhibit such markup frequently, for example verses crossing paragraph boundaries and vice versa. The OSIS schema introduced a method for encoding overlap in XML, known as Trojan milestones, or "Clix". See these and other papers in Proceedings of the Extreme Markup and later Balisage
Balisage
Balisage is, most commonly in military applications, the use of dim lighting to enable navigation while not giving away one's position to the enemy....
Conferences:
- http://xml.coverpages.org/DeRoseEML2004.pdf (2004) and
- http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme/Proceedings/html/2005/Bauman01/EML2005Bauman01.html (2005) Abstract: http://en.scientificcommons.org/43599936
See also
- Theological Markup LanguageTheological Markup LanguageThe Theological Markup Language is a "royalty-free" XML-based format created in 1998 by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to create electronic theological texts. Other formats such as STEP and Logos Library System were found unacceptable by CCEL as they are proprietary, prompting the...
- Go BibleGo BibleGo Bible is a free Bible viewer application for Java mobile phones . It was developed by Jolon Faichney in Surf City, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, with help from several other people who assisted in making versions for other languages and translations...
application for Java mobile phones - The SWORD ProjectThe Sword ProjectThe SWORD Project is the CrossWire Bible Society's free Bible software project. Its purpose is to create cross-platform open source tools—covered by the GNU General Public License—that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily.-Overview:The core of...
- a Bible softwareBible softwareBiblical software or Bible software is a group of computer applications designed to view and study biblical texts and concepts. Biblical software programs are similar to e-book readers in that they include digitally-formatted books, may be used to display a wide variety of inspirational books and...
platform that supports the OSIS standard - Zefania XMLZefania XMLZefania XML Bible markup language is an XML-based language for the description of Biblical texts. This allows applications that understand XML, to read and process Bible texts. Zefania XML is available under the GNU General Public License.- External links :...
Bible Markup Language
External links
- The OSIS Website
- GoBible – electronic Bible application for mobile phoneMobile phoneA mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s created using OSIS and ThML