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, SIL International, 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".
Famous quotes containing the words open, scripture, information and/or standard:
“Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.”
—Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)
“Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)