Plugins/scripts for typesetting a Bible in InDesign

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Simon Lindén

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Aug 1, 2013, 2:57:13 AM8/1/13
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Hi!
This question may be outside the general scope of this forum but I figured I'll give it a try.

I know that UBS has a plugin for InDesign that helps in creating a print-ready insert of the Bible, but I have been denied access to this software by the local Bible Society. I now face the challenge of writing these scripts myself or finding out if there are similar scripts available someplace else (either as open-source or for a low cost), or possibly some other solution?

My main issue with InDesign is that it only handles one stream of footnotes, I'll need two (notes and cross-references). InDesign also can't span columns with footnotes, so if I'll want the main text in two columns but footnotes in just one, there's no-way to do that. Basically I'll need some plugin that offers an entirely new footnote system. See image for clarification.

Any suggestion would be helpful. How do InDesign users without access to UBS's software solve issues like these?


Teus Benschop

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Aug 1, 2013, 4:45:06 AM8/1/13
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Hi Simon

I was in the same situation as you, and then wrote software that assisted a bit. It is integrated into  bibledit-web. The software also describes how to get the  Bible into Indesign.

Teus

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skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 1, 2013, 4:53:03 PM8/1/13
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Hello people,

please do not use InDesign for such issues, because essentially you hardly can have Open Scriptures with unfree processing software. I don't know if we of project "Freie Bibel" (German for "free Bible" - "free" not in terms of gratis, but as in freedom) could provide you a solution for your specific problem - however, we transform XML bible texts with XSLT to FO or LaTeX, where some of our layout settings span footnotes over two columns (where still some manual labour is involved to fix a pagebreak problem...I'm currently working on a solution based on eledmac/eledpar which maybe then will be fully automatic). According to documentation, more than one footnote apparatus should be possible, I just haven't tried anything like it yet. See our project description for the tools we've already released and try them out from here (SourceForge) or here (web mirror). In case something is missing or if you have a suggestion or extension to make, please work together with us in developing freely licensed (that is GNU GPL/AGPL) bible typesetting software.


Sincerely,
Stephan Kreutzer
http://www.freie-bibel.de

Teus Benschop

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Aug 2, 2013, 5:41:56 AM8/2/13
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I do agree with your point, Stephan, about the importance of open Scripture, but in our case the Bible Society wanted to use InDesign because of the advanced control it has over layout, and because the Bible Society is used to InDesign. Yet, the Scriptures, typeset through InDesign, remain open source, because the digital version is released under the GFDL, and is accessible from several places on the internet, and available as a Sword module - all for free. It's just the "printed" version where the Bible Society has copyright for. Actually the copyright does not extend itself to the "text", just to the "printed layout" of that text. Teus.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 2, 2013, 6:53:31 AM8/2/13
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Well, as far as I understand the question by Simon Lindén, he's going for print typesetting and can't accomplish a layout he has in mind because he hasn't access to some InDesign plugin other people have developed due to legal (copyright) or technical (physical access to the plugin) restrictions. To avoid such situations and the need to repeat the development of solutions that other people have already archieved, it would be a much better approach to build on software under a free license. Ideally, the dependency on InDesign for bible text typesetting should be removed completely in order to enable anybody to typeset a bible with a comparatively low requirement of specialized knowledge and without the need of somehow restricted tools (to allow reproducibility for anyone who wants to do something similar). The ability of bible typesetting (of significant quality, of course) should not be only in the hands of bible publishing companies. I guess we all wish to see a much more rich presentation of the biblical text in creative ways.

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 5, 2013, 5:36:32 PM8/5/13
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Does the Bible Society agree with the extent of the copyright? I kind of doubt it. Copyright normally extends to the text in all formats.
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Teus Benschop

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Aug 6, 2013, 1:23:19 AM8/6/13
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They are aware that the electronic text is available under the GFDL. After they were informed, they did not agree or disagree, but thanked for the information. So I don't know whether they agree to the extend of the copyright. What I know is that anybody can take the electronic text, and legally convert it into any format, and publish it. The particular typesetting done for this Bible Society was manual work, and I consider it an act of art, because they had very precise rules for the layout, line-breaks, varying word spacing, which could not be achieved automatically, because it involves manually checking of many artifacts. The whole process was overseen by a graphical designer. Now, it's only this "act of art", which I think, is their property - nothing else.

Teus.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 6, 2013, 6:30:55 AM8/6/13
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Teus, could you please point me to the GFDLed Scripture material you're refering? A link to a website or something like it?

Teus Benschop

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Aug 6, 2013, 6:37:25 AM8/6/13
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There are two of them:
2. Shona (still a work in progress) at http://bibleconsultants.dyndns.org/downloads/shona/bibles/
An interesting detail is that somebody printed the Shona New Testament as a work in progress, complied with the license notice (have never seen this before), and offers it on Amazon.
Teus.


On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 12:30 PM, <skreut...@googlemail.com> wrote:
Teus, could you please point me to the GFDLed Scripture material you're refering? A link to a website or something like it?

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 6, 2013, 2:16:46 PM8/6/13
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Thanks for those links! This two projects are obviously new translations in modern language, which will initially be made public under a free license, here GFDL. This is indeed the ideal case - however, in German language there is not one single modern language translation that is available under a free license (while there exists a project to create one), which limits our project "Freie Bibel" to old translations in outdated language (I can live with that, young believers probably not for the first time). Besides the legal considerations, the technical side is important, too. The two projects you linked seem to solve this well, while OpenDocument seems to be the main format for printing (is it?). Are those documents created automatically, and when yes: how? Our effort is to develop freely licensed tools that generate automatically from one source various bible typesettings, so that those can be used instantly or are alternatively open to manual adjustment to reach a professinal result. Those two projects could for instance use our tools to create EPUB2/EPUB3 (for E-Readers - may not be that important in Africa), while we would be unable to use anything they "freely" produced from the point on, where InDesign (or other proprietary, restrictive programs) is integrated into the toolchain. If free software is used, anyone is enabled to develop individual customizations in order to meet the actual needs, while hopefully the license policy and technical decisions of the people envolved would allow all other people too to benefit from their works. Think of a project that wants to create a study bible (or whatever) in Ndebele based on the translation mentioned, where the participants would be willing to do all the work on their own, but would be required to use InDesign somewhere in the process, because no other solution for preparing a print edition would be given to them, and the effort of doing all manually within LibreOffice just wouldn't be affordable. So far some random thoughts about the need of a freely licensed Bible typesetting toolchain.

As you mentioned the book offer on Amazon, one may ask if the seller does comply with the GFDL in terms of ensuring access to the books "source code" - checking this would be either the job of the authors or of a recipient.

Russell Allen

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Aug 7, 2013, 1:56:44 AM8/7/13
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For OpenEnglishBible.org I have a usfm->TeX->pdf converter which is adequate for our purposes for now. Happy to talk anyone through using it, though the format it aims for is single column, numbers in margin rather than double column numbers in text.  It uses the ConTeXt macros rather than LaTeX.

The toolchain generates our pdf, text, html etc.

I'd be definitely interested in any possible collaboration so that the various open source/free translation projects (OEB, WEB, Freie Bibel etc) can share a common publishing toolchain.

Russell



On 07/08/2013, at 4:16 AM, skreut...@googlemail.com wrote:

Thanks for those links! This two projects are obviously new translations in modern language, which will initially be made public under a free license, here GFDL. This is indeed the ideal case - however, in German language there is not one single modern language translation that is available under a free license (while there exists a project to create one), which limits our project "Freie Bibel" to old translations in outdated language (I can live with that, young believers probably not for the first time). Besides the legal considerations, the technical side is important, too. The two projects you linked seem to solve this well, while OpenDocument seems to be the main format for printing (is it?). Are those documents created automatically, and when yes: how? Our effort is to develop freely licensed tools that generate automatically from one source various bible typesettings, so that those can be used instantly or are alternatively open to manual adjustment to reach a professinal result. Those two projects could for instance use our tools to create EPUB2/EPUB3 (for E-Readers - may not be that important in Africa), while we would be unable to use anything they "freely" produced from the point on, where InDesign (or other proprietary, restrictive programs) is integrated into the toolchain. If free software is used, anyone is enabled to develop individual customizations in order to meet the actual needs, while hopefully the license policy and technical decisions of the people envolved would allow all other people too to benefit from their works. Think of a project that wants to create a study bible (or whatever) in Ndebele based on the translation mentioned, where the participants would be willing to do all the work on their own, but would be required to use InDesign somewhere in the process, because no other solution for preparing a print edition would be given to them, and the effort of doing all manually within LibreOffice just wouldn't be affordable. So far some random thoughts about the need of a freely licensed Bible typesetting toolchain.

As you mentioned the book offer on Amazon, one may ask if the seller does comply with the GFDL in terms of ensuring access to the books "source code" - checking this would be either the job of the authors or of a recipient.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 7, 2013, 7:02:45 AM8/7/13
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I see, the OEB seems to be equivalent to the German "Offene Bibel", which is licensed under CC BY-SA, because under German law one cannot give a work into Public Domain initially, so instead of using the CC0 fallback those folks are additionally more of the free/libre philosophy and therefore want to have Copyleft in place.

Your USFM->TeX->PDF converter sounds interesting, especially if you would consider to freely license it and maybe to change the USFM input format to a XML input format. I looked at the OEB PDFs, and while we in our project currently are more in the field of two-column settings, a two-page (left/right) solution with verse notes corresponding to even/odd page number is a feature we still miss.

So lets think about collaboration in the development of a freely licensed bible typesetting toolchain. Like your tools and our tools, there will probably be some software already in existence, so the question would be if it is sufficient to set up a website or the like to just link to several independent projects. The other idea would be to set up a repository for such purpose in order to share a common codebase among the repository members, to create a centralized place for people who are interested, to ensure control over the source code (the repository would be a mirror for free tools which are not developed within the repository itself and therefore prevent that such code may get lost) and to provide good maintainability.
From a legal standpoint, GNU AGPLed software should be prefered (Affero to prevent that the software is hosted by someone as a service without him being required by GPL terms to make the source code available).
From a technical standpoint, there should be a common input format for all the tools, so that bible resources in other formats just need to be converted, instead of rewriting every tool for every possible input format. I would strongly recommend an XML based format because XML is highly accessible by programming languages and is widely recognized by people who can read/write XML. We in our project have as input format so-called "Haggai XML", which is a slightly modernized version of "Zefania XML", a very primitive bible format, by which we intended to encourage people to directly work on the modules or at least enable them to do so, if they would ever wish to make modifications. Probably I would rewrite our tools to an other XML input format.
Any suggestions?

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 7, 2013, 7:55:36 AM8/7/13
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The tool chain that I'm developing is USFM -> USFX (XML) -> XeLaTeX -> PDF, as well as USFM -> USFX (XML) -> HTML and USFM -> USFX (XML) -> Modified OSIS -> Sword modules, etc. In other words, I'm using USFX as my hub format for publishing Bibles. I can start with USFM, USFX, or (with help from Paratext) USX (another XML format). Right now, the HTML generation is working well (and used for hundreds of Bible translations online), and the other conversions are still works in progress. Conversions from any other format generally require some custom manual labor to convert to USFM or USFX, whichever is easiest for the given source format.

USFX is documented at http://ebible.org/usfx/ -- which documentation assumes you know USFM (http://ubs-icap.org/chm/usfm/2.4/index.html).

My open source (Gnu LGPL) C# publishing tool is at http://haiola.org.
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Russell Allen

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Aug 7, 2013, 8:49:25 PM8/7/13
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Is the "Offene Bibel" the same as the "Freie Bibel" mentioned earlier? 

My code is at https://github.com/openenglishbible/USFM-Tools and I've made it MIT licenced which is my preferred open source approach. The biggest limitations are the lack of tests, and the way it isn't properly separated from the OEB. This makes it a bit brittle. 

I suggest that the first step is to set up a site listing all of the available tools, platforms and licences. 

What I know about:

Open English Bible's USFM-Tools
Transforms usfm into PDF (via ConTeXt), HTML, Doc (via HTML), Text, CSV, BibleBrowser files
Python2, MIT Licence

Kahunapule Michael Johnson's Haiola
Transforms usfm->usfx, then usfx into PDF (via XeLaTeX), HTML, Modified OSIS, Sword module (via OSIS)
C# Mono, (Licence?)

Freie Bibel's Tools
Transforms HaggaiXML into PDF (via FO), EPUB, HTML
XSL, GPL3

Are these descriptions right? What am I missing?

Russell



Russell Allen

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Aug 7, 2013, 8:57:58 PM8/7/13
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Am I right in understanding that I can roundtrip usfm -> usfx -> usfm without losing anything? If that is so then maybe I can retarget my code to also use usfx as a hub format. Currently I take usfm and parse it into an internal memory structure, and render that into html etc. 

Is HaggaiXML -> USFX and OSIS -> USFX possible? 

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 7, 2013, 8:58:12 PM8/7/13
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Good idea.

The license on Haiola is the Gnu Lesser Public License 3.0. (We don't use the regular GPL, because sometimes we want to link to a converter for a proprietary format that we unfortunately aren't free to give away the details of.) Conversion from USFX to ePub is also on my list of things to do. (It shouldn't be much more work than the HTML, theoretically.) :-)

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 7, 2013, 9:15:14 PM8/7/13
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On 08/07/2013 02:57 PM, Russell Allen wrote:
Am I right in understanding that I can roundtrip usfm -> usfx -> usfm without losing anything?

Yes, as long as the USFM is correct, and restricted to the supported features (i.e. everything except some of the study Bible and peripheral content). There are command line utilities in the Haiola distribution to do each direction, or you can use the main haiola.exe to do that. Running through a round trip like that will have the effect of normalizing the USFM somewhat, but the text and formatting is preserved.

The USFX is a little easier to work with, especially if there are nested styles, or if you want to know explicitly where verses end (i.e. before a title before the next verse). There is code in my converter that figures all of that out for you so you don't have to repeat that work in reading USFM.


 If that is so then maybe I can retarget my code to also use usfx as a hub format. Currently I take usfm and parse it into an internal memory structure, and render that into html etc.

Whatever is easy for you. :-)

Is HaggaiXML -> USFX and OSIS -> USFX possible?

I don't know the details of the HaggaiXML format, but I suspect that it would be pretty simple to convert it to USFX. From there, you get conversion to several other formats (USFM, (Modified) OSIS, HTML, etc.) for free with Haiola.

I don't currently have an OSIS -> USFX converter, and don't plan to make one until such time as an actual need arises and has a high enough priority to merit the considerable effort required. General interpretation of all possible OSIS documents is a really complex problem, but extracting useful text from a particular known text in OSIS format might not be too hard, depending on the choices made in encoding the work. I treat OSIS as an output-only format, and then only useful as an intermediate step to generating Sword modules. Some formatting is lost in the conversion from USFX to OSIS, but those are in features that the SWORD project doesn't support anyway.

teusjannette

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Aug 8, 2013, 2:04:54 AM8/8/13
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Useful tools, all of them indeed. if USFM -> OpenDocument is needed, then bibledit-web (http://bibledit.orghttp://bibleconsultants.dyndns.org/bibledit-web-demo/index/) may assist. In addition to OpenDocument, it also converts USFM to good ol' plain text, as well as to eSword, Online Bible, OSIS, interlinked html, plain html, and Sword module. (I am not sure if eSword is a proprietary format, but the bibledit-web PHP code describes how to generate it in unencrypted format). Teus.

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 2:49 AM, Russell Allen <oeb...@openenglishbible.org> wrote:
I suggest that the first step is to set up a site listing all of the available tools, platforms and licences. 
What I know about:
Open English Bible's USFM-Tools
Kahunapule Michael Johnson's Haiola
Freie Bibel's Tools

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 8, 2013, 4:33:53 PM8/8/13
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@Kahunapule:
If you use the LGPL instead of the GPL to be able to link to a converter for a proprietary format, the question is, if the proprietary format is your input format or output format. If it is your input format, you should rather develop a standalone program that transforms the proprietary format into an openly documented format, which can be, if it is unavoidable, LGPLed, while your toolchain could be GPLed/AGPLed. The LGPL for your toolchain is harmful, because it encourages (or is beneficial for) the use of proprietary formats and software, which is the initial problem we want to solve: to have free bible texts and tools to work with it. Further, C# aims for a proprietary operating system and programming environment, which excludes a set of people from using it for no other reason than an artificial one, that is: to protect a monopoly. We're not in favour of any monopolies and their harmful practices at the expense of the society, especially in the field of bible materials and inclusive all the different ways needed to recieve and to work with them. However, maybe a port to an other free programming environment is possible, or at least the use of the lower stack that handles TeX/HTML. I do understand that you may have had historical reasons to build upon the proprietary programming environment and to work with a proprietary bible format. I believe that we can do better in the future.

If you're going to implement EPUB2/EPUB3 as target format, you could either use our hag2epub tools or at least look at them to find out how such transformation could be implemented. Indeed it is very simple to implement.

@Russell Allen:
No, "Offene Bibel" is a distinctive project. "Offene Bibel" is a new translation in current German language (they use a Wiki for translation work with integrated converter plugins of their own to produce various end formats), see offene-bibel.de. "Freie Bibel" is our project to digitalize bible texts that are already existing (if they are either in the German equivalent of Public Domain or freely licensed and not digitally available). Because of their good licensing and technical work it looks like we will be easily able to use their results.

The problem with the so-called MIT license (actually it is the X11 license) is that a software package licensed this way can be over time turned in a proprietary package. This happened with the X window system itself, because some company made changes to it, got their unfree version widely spread, the common public became more and more unaware of the original free X11 system over time and so from then on X11 was rendered unfree in a practical sense, where it could theoretically still be obtained as the free version. Only imagine what would happen if the free version will ever became physically unavailable or discontinued - then all the work, which was intended to create a free window system (otherwise a proprietary window system could be used as well) would be completely wasted, there would be the need to write again a free replacement for it. Especially smaller projects can't count on their publicity, which would probably prevent the free version becoming unavailable (this scenario gets worse, when the small project is overtaken by a initiative with much more resources). See a speech by Richard Stallman (from minute 5:00) for more information about this issue. The lack of Copyleft in the X11 license allows that modifications can be licensed under different individual, potentially restrictive terms, so not only this encourages not to contribute back to the community, it also can harm the community in keeping from them what originally should belong to them.

Your descriptions look correct for me, just that we transform Haggai XML into PDF not only via FO, but via LaTeX too. Since the target formats are too PDF and HTML, we special applications that produce parallel bible PDF and comparison table HTML files over several translations.

There is no converter existent to convert Haggai XML into an other bible format nor vice versa, but since Haggai XML is very primitive, it would be easy to implement one, while there won't be much complex informations within the Haggai XML file so the result will be a feature-poor bible module when converted to such other formats. We're not strongly bound to Haggai XML, we just started with Zefania XML in order to make modifications easy for participants, and since Zefania XML was outdated, Haggai XML is its modernization porposal (with more consideration for print rather than bible programs). If USFX or OSIS does fit, we could maybe change all our materials on it. I haven't looked very deeply into those formats.

@Teus Benschop:
The eSword format is surely proprietary, because eSword itself is proprietary, the eSword EULA forbids the commercial use of eSword modules as well as hosting them. Disassembling or reverse engineering eSword modules is forbidden, too. One may ask if those restrictions can apply, if an eSword module is downloaded from the eSword website or from another website, because he would only agree to the EULA while installing eSword, but when not doing so, the EULA probably doesn't apply (as far as I can see, the website itself doesn't state those limitations). Getting worse, it looks like eSword modules can only be obtained by a downloader within the eSword program, so the source of eSword modules may be kept secret. The manual installation of eSword modules may be prevented by technical measures. There seems to be no eSword format specification out there. But also note this: the SWORD (not eSword) format is somehow "open", but there exists no documentation for it because the SWORD people basically take OSIS as input and produce Sword modules out of it, where changes are made in OSIS, so that the Sword format is just some kind of their compiled end format. The lack of documentation (specification at least) is explained by the need of flexibility for format changes. Therefore they provide an API for interaction with Sword modules, which is available in several ports. This way, the API implementation is their "format specification". So I personally don't consider the Sword format as completely open, because the undesirable dependency on an API for something that should be plain text and easily editable (no need to "obfuscate" through unclear format constructions), and the possibility that OSIS modules become rare and Sword modules widespread, which would look still convenient on the practical level for bible software users, but not for bible software developers such as us (except conversion back to OSIS or the like, but then just let it all the time be in OSIS or the like - I see no benefit in the Sword format itself - maybe there is a minor one, for the risk of loosing freedom on the technical side).

I found your source code repository on Savannah, maybe I'll look more into it for OpenDocument support. Thankfully, you chose GPLv3 or any later version ;-)

@all:
Do you know of an USFX repository of bible texts? Do you know of an OSIS repository of bible texts? For Haggai XML, there are essentially no modules yet available, because just we in our project use it. It is still very similar to Zefania XML (so conversions in both ways easily possible), for which a repository of bible texts exists (unfortunately, it is inactive/not maintained).

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 8, 2013, 5:40:29 PM8/8/13
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On 08/08/2013 10:33 AM, skreut...@googlemail.com wrote:
@Kahunapule:
If you use the LGPL instead of the GPL to be able to link to a converter for a proprietary format, the question is, if the proprietary format is your input format or output format. If it is your input format, you should rather develop a standalone program that transforms the proprietary format into an openly documented format, which can be, if it is unavoidable, LGPLed, while your toolchain could be GPLed/AGPLed. The LGPL for your toolchain is harmful, because it encourages (or is beneficial for) the use of proprietary formats and software, which is the initial problem we want to solve: to have free bible texts and tools to work with it. Further, C# aims for a proprietary operating system and programming environment, which excludes a set of people from using it for no other reason than an artificial one, that is: to protect a monopoly. We're not in favour of any monopolies and their harmful practices at the expense of the society, especially in the field of bible materials and inclusive all the different ways needed to recieve and to work with them. However, maybe a port to an other free programming environment is possible, or at least the use of the lower stack that handles TeX/HTML. I do understand that you may have had historical reasons to build upon the proprietary programming environment and to work with a proprietary bible format. I believe that we can do better in the future.

Yes, LGPL and C# are not the greatest for an open source purist, but LGPL is arguably more free than GPL in terms of what you can do with it, and C# is an open standard with open source compilers available. It is too late to change licenses, now, because it is not all my code, and too much of a hassle to get full buy-in from everyone, including some corporate contributors. I can live with that for now. My life is full of compromises, but the main part of Haiola is and will remain open on Haiola.org. C# works fine with Mono, and my normal work environment is in Linux, so that part is well tested. I only put in the proprietary extension what I have to, and then only for output formats... and part of that I think can be liberated in the future. Of bigger concern to me is that most of the Bible texts I publish are under CC-BY-ND-NC with 2 additional permission clauses. That "NC" bothers me, because it makes print-on-demand and traditional printing problematic. At this point, my choice is to keep the "NC" or get nothing from many of these sources, so I do what I can do. The "NC" does solve some very real problems, though, with respect to negotiating rights. With no money involved, fewer blocks are thrown up due to greed. See http://mljohnson.org/journal for my latest comments on that.

With respect to proprietary formats of the Bible, I have no problem with Bibles going into those on a non-exclusive basis, as long as they are available in open formats and open platforms, too. In principle, I have no problem with people selling Bibles in print or electronically, too, as long as the same Bibles are available from other publishers at low cost (print) or no cost (electronic). If someone wants to read the World English Bible in a proprietary program using a proprietary format, then let them, as long as it is also available for free in open formats and on open platforms.


If you're going to implement EPUB2/EPUB3 as target format, you could either use our hag2epub tools or at least look at them to find out how such transformation could be implemented. Indeed it is very simple to implement.

I'll take a look at that. :-) ...
I'll probably have to build on them one way or another, because I try to preserve the full richness of the markup possible in USFM in some way, plus using live hyperlinks where they make sense.


@all:
Do you know of an USFX repository of bible texts?

ftp://ebible.org/pub/Scriptures/ (files labeled *_usfx.zip)


Do you know of an OSIS repository of bible texts?

ftp://ebible.org/pub/Scriptures/ (files labeled *_osis.zip) -- same texts as above for USFX and derived from those, but with some possible formatting loss relative to the USFX due to a mismatch between the way the two standards are constructed. OSIS is a secondary, output-only format in my tool chain, so use the USFX unless you have a good reason to use OSIS, like tools already written to import OSIS.)

Contributions of good freely distributable Bible texts are welcome.

For Haggai XML, there are essentially no modules yet available, because just we in our project use it. It is still very similar to Zefania XML (so conversions in both ways easily possible), for which a repository of bible texts exists (unfortunately, it is inactive/not maintained).

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oebible

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Aug 8, 2013, 9:26:57 PM8/8/13
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On 2013-08-09 07:33, skreut...@googlemail.com wrote:
> @Russell Allen:
> No, "Offene Bibel" is a distinctive project. [snip]

Cool. That makes sense.

> The problem with the so-called MIT license [snip]

Ah, the GNU v BSD Holy War :) Up there with EMACS v VI :) :)

The aim of the OEB (and of the incidental software written to support
it) isn't to get rid of proprietary copyrighted English translations
(many of which are great works of scholarship) but to contribute to the
group of free and unrestricted alternatives (of which Kahunapule's WEB
is such an important example).

I'm completely comfortable with people taking the OEB and basing
proprietary work on it. In fact, the NT was recently used in Hal
Taussig's A New New Testament[1] which aimed to shed greater light on
non-Canonical New Testament era works by publishing them in new
translation together with the Canonical works. Mr Taussig's translation
team benefited by not having to start from scratch for the NT texts or
convince another publisher of their changes, and we benefited from
important feedback which helps us prepare a better OEB.

I say this not to dissuade your team from using the licence which best
fits your philosophy, but to explain why CC0 and MIT were consciously
chosen for the OEB, with a full awareness of the tradeoffs implied.

Cheers, Russell


[1]:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Combining-Traditional-Discovered/dp/0547792107/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0



Teus Benschop

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Aug 9, 2013, 6:03:45 AM8/9/13
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An eSword module is a SQLite database. It's possible to dump the contents of this database to a text file containing all the SQL statements that were used to create this database. The text file shows the structure of the database. Thus a new text file can be created from another Bible, loaded into a SQLite database, and that creates a new eSword module. The "sqlite3" command on Linux does the dumping and filling of the database / eSword module. Some modules are encrypted, and dumping this to a text file gives stuff that can't be interpreted. Teus.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 9, 2013, 9:23:21 AM8/9/13
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@Kahunapule:
Yes, the LGPL is more "free" to support unfree software. The LGPL was initially designed to be only used in strategic cases, where a LGPLed library would provide an open/free technology to proprietary software in order to support open formats/mechanisms and establish them, where the proprietary software developers would refuse to support the technology coming with the LGPLed library, when the library would be licensed under GPL and therefore would require the proprietary program to be freely licensed, which the developers of the proprietary program refused initially by not licensing their program under a free licensing. This way, even if the software itself remains restrictive, hopefully it doesn't continue to rely on proprietary interfaces and secret formats and further harm could be prevented, maybe it could even assist in establishing free formats and by doing so encourage people to switch to free software. Unfortunately, people started to use the LGPL for a lot of other cases (for programs, for cases without any strategic significance), and surely they can't be forbidden to use the LGPL in every scenario they like. But I guess you would agree that a LGPL licensed library is only to the benefit for the proprietary program (provision of source code), while the library doesn't gain anything from the proprietary program in return (except strategic acceptance, but no source code, no library implementation), so this is a one-direction relationship which tends to promote the proprietary program because of the additional features. Indeed, re-licensing is hard work for a mistake made in the first place, and I can understand why you do not want to take it. On the other hand, you and we and the general public will have to live with the effects the LGPL has on your code, which includes the use of your code linked with programs which won't be made available for you or us or the general public. This issue may not become relevant, except your code gets widespread, and the more it gets popular, the more the LGPL problem is worsening.

C# seems to be nowadays not a very big problem any more. I may try to compile your sources on Mono, if Mono is available in one of the entirely free operating system distributions (hopefully Mono doesn't use some cruel technique to make it practically impossible to use Mono without some sort of proprietary bits somewhere in its code or without some restricted components). Apart from that I don't get what the great benefit of having the .NET VM for free operating systems should be, because Mono needs to attach .NET interfaces to a POSIX system, which is not the most natural thing to do. Especially when there already other VMs that provide the same key benefit of having .NET at all: portability of binary executables. Well, Java was a proprietary VM as well, but Oracle has at least taken several significant steps to make it free software, combined with the efforts of the Classpath/OpenJDK/IcedTea project. And there is even the most natural "VM" for all of the current free operating systems: a C compiler with source code as main form of distribution. Sure, the binaries are not portable, but do not need to (because the binary isn't the only thing delivered as with proprietary programs), and for binary distribution there is the concept of the software repositories for precompiled packages for the various architectures and platforms. Well, GUI stuff isn't portable this way, so in this area there's the responsibility left onto the developer.

As of CC-BY-ND-NC, we're in the bad position that we can't do anything about it. So its up to you if you use or avoid such texts. Hopefully the freely licensed bible software can raise the awareness of such problems and help to move authors and publishers (well, it's mostly the authors fault if he signs a contract with a publisher that is demanding extensive exclusive rights - especially nowadays there is no particular need to go with an publisher in order to get a bible text out to people). The NC part is a widespread common error in the thinking of Christians, based on a misinterpretation of "freely you have received, freely give" (Matthew 10,8) - this verse obviously doesn't speak about distribution of written Scripture (where one can think about if this verse does more emphasize the healing or the preaching, where for healing several parallel verses exist, and preaching could be compared to "worker/wages" - however, my personal opinion about this question, which I won't tell you, doesn't exclude the one or other emphasis from being valid). Paul has his unique approach, by first 2. Corinthians 11,7, but then too Philippians 1,15-19 (note the conclusion in verse 19). While all those verses never mention written Scripture and are unlikely to expand over the preaching (where the preaching is in context of the urgent need of mission), at this time - from beginning of the earth up to the invention of the printing press - paper and handwriting were really expensive. The idea of a "copyright" wasn't present at all, so there couldn't be even the idea of charging for an "intellectual property" within a text on display (which is distinctive from texts that get written as a contract work - but when once circulated, there wouldn't be any kind of restriction, neither technically nor legally, to copy it). What was charged (legitimately, in my opinion) was the time of the scribe, the material and profit (for whoever sells the work: scribe, scriptorium, book seller). The price was for the work of physically producing the book plus some additional reward for doing so. Apart from that, there were no further restrictions, whoever can commit the time and money for the material needed, could make a copy (and modifications as well). Today, the situation is completely inverted. We all have the money for the material needed (let it be a computer, printer, paper, USB stick, CD ROM, internet connection, webserver) and need virtually no time to copy something digitally. Instead, we have legal restrictions which are completely of an artificial nature imposed by publishers. Instead of directly paying authors for the creation of new works (like the scribe, contract work), we pay publishers to get physical access and legal permission, which the publishers initially artificially shortened (made unavailable by putting their restrictive licensing in and by not distributing it over our various copying machines - i.e. the internet, CD ROM burner, etc.) and then used the shortage to force payments on everybody. Still the payment isn't the problem, but the legal and technical restrictions which come with this mechanism, so that future works and improvements get prevented. Of course it depends on the publisher and it is his own responsibility, but some of the publishers are not giving the money they earn for the work of an author back to this author. The usual case is that nearly nothing of the money gets back to the author, it all remains at the publisher. Whatever the publisher is doing with it, if he is spending the money on a luxurious lifestyle or to fund new book projects of other authors, if not the original author gets a quite significant share of it (when the money is used to fund other book projects), the author can get discouraged or even financially disabled to do further work in the field he has already published, because his readers crossfund other books instead of the thing they like (and therefore bought it). Additionally, the lifecycle of a publication is not that long - publishers get bankrupt or loose interest (for policy or financial reasons) in new reprints of the work, so physical copies become rare and their digitalization and redistribution is prohibited for some 100 years (30 years the author lived after his publication and 70 years copyright). This is not tolerable for software (imagine the computers in 100 years - however, reducing the copyright time would be useless for packages that get distributed as binaries only - here it is the responsibility of the authors!) and not for bible texts, in general: not for any work of practical use (opposed to art or expression of opinion). Free software explicitly encourages commercial uses, where the profit is seen as a motivation for people to widespread, adopt and improve free software. Because the artificial restrictions are removed there, it is a win-win situation for the seller and buyer, and the instrument of forcing payments is replaced by other models of payment (contract work or support offerings, which are actual direct improvements instead of paying for passing an artificial shortage). See another speech of Richard Stallman about Copyright vs. Community. Conclusion: NC, in the false assumption of complying with the bible, does the opposite in preventing the spread of the bible over commercial distribution channels (which may indeed be very creative, not only publisher online stores - people could sell CD ROMs with free bible texts on it while charging only for the medium itself and shipment etc.). Commercial use of freely licensed material still contains for every individual recepient the opportunity to redistribute free of charge. The initial payment to obtain a copy in the first place complies with "worker/wages", where the best offer in a free market may win.

The only problem with having bible texts, that are also available freely, too in proprietary formats and for proprietary software is that it drives people away from the free materials and efforts to create and maintain them, when people find the proprietary version more convenient. I would like to establish a collaborating community for free bible resources that can act in an organized effort, while I acknowledge that it is within the freedom of authors to choose to support proprietary formats and programs as they wish. Just think about the proprietary bible programs: there are many, each competing with all the others, and all the time new projects get launched to produce yet another one. A lot of work is repeated there, instead of working together and collaborate and to share ideas, concepts and code (while still forking, splits and competition are possible in the free world, but bottom line is that all projects can share a common foundation and could be compatible/interchangeable).

For preserving the markup of USFM in EPUB, EPUB2 will probably lack of the features required, while EPUB3 (as a result of EPUB3 basing on HTML5, JavaScript, CSS) will probably lack the support of E-Readers that accept EPUB3 and render all the features used.

@Russel Allen:
I'm not in favor of technology wars (I'm too young to be historically tied to one or other position), I just try my very best based on my current knowledge, to make my works as usable for the user as possible, because my lifetime and the lifetime of others invested is too expensive to waste it just due to some sloppy decisions. Some time ago, I myself preferred the X11 license because its text is much shorter than the GPL (which I haven't read at that time). But then I learned about the risks of the X11 license and switched to GPL/AGPL. That the GPL is a longer text couldn't hinder me, because the idea is that I spend hours on programming some stuff, and reading the GPL can be done in a half hour or so, while a wrong license could completely waste all the hours of programming. So it was easy to invest the half hour, like I read lots of other texts as well from time to time ;-)

In case of Mr. Taussig you were lucky that he was contributing back the feedback, because he has right and freedom to use your material, while you depend on his goodwill to contribute back. But apart from the feedback the material he prepared is lost to the common public, because if anyone needs to fix an error in his work, wants to make improvements or additions, he can't, because Hal Taussig's A New New Testament is proprietary. If I want to use it or work with it, I would have to first create a free replacement for it - which is true for you, too! Don't you think that we in future could improve the currently bad situation in free bible resources by kindly inviting people like Mr. Taussig to participate and contribute to a library of bible material, open and free to everyone?

@Teus Benschop:
Thanks for those hints, I was not aware of this. So technically unencrypted eSword format could be considered somehow "open" (or can be made open by documenting the table structures). Still, the restrictions on the eSword software (a replacement would be needed) and the arguably effective or ineffective license policy of the eSword EULA are remaining.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 9, 2013, 11:12:00 AM8/9/13
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@Kahunapule:
I've just read your article and have to say that I really appreciate it. Some notes on it: Gutenberg did not print the Latin Bible as his first work (although it was the first widely recognized). While it is difficult to undoubtedly proofe that some of the printing works are actually made by him, at least some of them will be of his first works: a grammar, indulgence letters, calendars, papal bull, property list, a poem and a prophetic book. This is believed to have created him some income.

The "integrity" issue from a historical perspective is very interesting, I haven't thought about it before. The integrity seems to have been preserved (more or less - at least enough) up to the current day, even without any copyright law. This is quite surprising, because in the times of handwriting the integrity was assured by simple comparing mechanisms, and today with all the digital and printed bible copies around everywhere, there is in the view of bible publishers suddenly a risk of loosing that integrity, so that copyright should assure it now? OK, digital copies may be altered easier, but they too can be compared easier. So copyright does no good in case of integrity, but has harmful side effects on a lot of other issues. Further, a license could reserve the right for modification, but allow redistribution, which they don't do if they were really after the integrity.

Your list of instances where you got victim of a restrictive policy is very impressive and helpful, here in Germany there is no awareness of such cases at all (no zhuber.com incident or something comparable). Only smaller websites were forced to take their bible texts down. On the other hand, we will never see the work which got prevented in the first place. Maybe I should start such a list for myself for German instances.

I'm a little confused that you mention CC BY-NC-ND - your observations are somehow comprehensible, but I wouldn't suggest the compromise. Wouldn't it be better to suggest CC BY-SA as the ideal goal and then mention CC BY-NC-ND as a first step that publishers could go in order to make their bible text free, which would be at least better than no permissions at all? The way you say it, it looks like CC BY-NC-ND would be preferable. On the NC part I already commented - the ND part is problematic, too. ND is not the main tool to secure the integrity of the text, so even as supposed "compromise" it prevents the user of the following useful things: correcting errors, adding extensions (study notes, language information, appendix - or remove such), modernizing the text or translating the text (maybe you proposed exceptions to the CC for format transformation and translation). And well, is the integrity that important? If somebody alters the text, the BY clause demands from him to not to reflect his modifications to the original author, so people won't get confused about this or that version or the original. Bible translations get revised all the time by a lot of different people, and if somebody could do a better translation of a particular verse than the translator the publisher hired, why not let him apply the improvement and distribute it? The BY clause (for the original and all modifications as well via SA) will take care that the quality or the lack of quality always gets attributed to the right people. However, if somebody alters the entire bible and not just part of it, there might be the risk that it would constitute a new work under new copyright, so that integrity can't be maintained the way it was intented with ND.

Kahunapule Michael Johnson

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Aug 9, 2013, 2:30:48 PM8/9/13
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Thank you for your insightful comments, below.

None of the Creative Commons licenses is perfect for Bible distribution. I'm just letting people know the best one I have been able to get agreement on widely (hundreds of translations) and why. The copyright owner is still free to grant additional permission beyond the general license that they grant everyone, as long as it doesn't contradict the general license. Therefore, the copyright owner can grant freedom to certain organizations to print Bibles for sale and/or to make revisions or other legitimate derivative works. In the mean time, CC BY-ND-NC with additional permission to change file formats (but not the text) and to make extracts (i.e. printing a passage for a Bible study group) is a HUGE step towards freedom away from the old standard of no more than 500 verses and always less than a whole book. It gives a huge advantage to those of us who like to distribute the Holy Bible for free in digital formats in as many languages as we can. Perhaps with the passage of time we can convince the major Bible copyright holders to loosen up a little more. Pray. It really will take God softening their hearts and coming to terms with spiritual reality.

My personal preferences and leadership by example is reflected in the World English Bible and LXX2012: dedication to the Public Domain + protecting the name with a trademark + digitally signing main distributions. It is simple, never blocks any legitimate use of the Holy Bible, and preserves trust and reputation by not allowing derivative works to be called by the same name as the original. The digital signature is probably only checked by the most technically inclined and interested parties, but it is there to at least theoretically provide assurance that the text has not been corrupted between the master copy at eBible.org and wherever it was found. Even in its draft form (still working on Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel and making small corrections to typos, etc. elsewhere), it has gone viral in a good sense. What about the bad stuff the naysayers said might happen? I don't see any of that. Well, OK, I'm not rich like Zondervan, and live by faith in God, but God is faithful, so it is OK. If the World English Bible text gets abused, that is God's domain to deal with, not mine. I just keep working on making it a better translation. I do see some good, though. People are reading and listening to the Holy Bible, maybe more than they would have if they had to pay for every copy, and God's Word never returns to Him empty. (Isaiah 55:11)
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Russell Allen

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Aug 10, 2013, 3:50:32 AM8/10/13
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On 09/08/2013, at 11:23 PM, skreut...@googlemail.com wrote:
> @Russel Allen:
> I'm not in favor of technology wars (I'm too young to be historically tied to one or other position), I just try my very best based on my current knowledge, to make my works as usable for the user as possible, because my lifetime and the lifetime of others invested is too expensive to waste it just due to some sloppy decisions. Some time ago, I myself preferred the X11 license because its text is much shorter than the GPL (which I haven't read at that time). But then I learned about the risks of the X11 license and switched to GPL/AGPL. That the GPL is a longer text couldn't hinder me, because the idea is that I spend hours on programming some stuff, and reading the GPL can be done in a half hour or so, while a wrong license could completely waste all the hours of programming. So it was easy to invest the half hour, like I read lots of other texts as well from time to time ;-)
>
> In case of Mr. Taussig you were lucky that he was contributing back the feedback, because he has right and freedom to use your material, while you depend on his goodwill to contribute back. But apart from the feedback the material he prepared is lost to the common public, because if anyone needs to fix an error in his work, wants to make improvements or additions, he can't, because Hal Taussig's A New New Testament is proprietary. If I want to use it or work with it, I would have to first create a free replacement for it - which is true for you, too! Don't you think that we in future could improve the currently bad situation in free bible resources by kindly inviting people like Mr. Taussig to participate and contribute to a library of bible material, open and free to everyone?


Certainly I will (and have) kindly invite all users of the OEB to participate and contribute to it and to the wider body of Bible material, to the extent that they are willing and able. However I am content to leave the choice of how to act up to them and their consciences and circumstances, and will not use copyright law to restrict their use of the OEB. This goes for users who wish to make their own versions proprietary just as much as users who wish to make their own version with translation choices I find wrong or offensive.

I do understand your points, I've been around open source a while and appreciate the concerns you raise, but current licensing for the OEB and related materials suits our project and aims. You must do what you believe is right for your projects.

Best wishes, Russell


skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 10, 2013, 6:43:15 AM8/10/13
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@Kahunapule:
Oh, OK, it was not clear to me that you wrote the recommendation of CC BY-ND-NC from your specific standpoint of a bible text distribution website, where the situation for considering CC BY-ND-NC is clearly, either licensing under CC BY-ND-NC or nothing. In this case, recommending CC BY-ND-NC is without doubt the better choice. While the recommendation of CC BY-ND-NC is a pragmatic compromise on the input side, it isn't on the output side (for the users who get the texts from you). Unfortunately, input and output are strongly linked together and one-directional, so one can't do anything about it.

The responsibility for integrity is in my opinion too on the side of the person who does the modifications, and I would even extend it to the profit, which someone is making from commercial distribution of a freely licensed material, both they should be allowed to do to their best conscience. To disallow modification or commercial use is a danger for an entire community, the corruption of a Bible text and the abuse of profits is only a danger for the individual who does such, while the community still reserves means to protect itself against such actions.

@Russell Allen:
Well, the main question we all have to ask ourselves is, if freedom in bible materials is an important matter for us or not. If I understand correctly what you've said, your position is that anyone should have the freedom to decide whether he/she wants to have freedom that has already been established or choose to loose it. The default is that any author can refuse freedom or commit to freedom within the initial act of licensing a work (or re-licensing). The difference in your particular case is that the new work is based on a freely licensed original, so that the author of the new work might seem to be forced to commitment to freedom, which you think is wrong. However, it is interesting here that you initially took the direction of freely licensing your original work, which indicated that to some extend you indeed think that freedom is an important matter. While appreciating freedom for your own works, it seems contradictory to not appreciate freedom for the work of others or especially derivative works, where the latter are in part your own work. Further, derivative works of works derived from your original are potentially prevented, so while you allow deriviative works of your original work, you deny this very same right to works that have derived from your original, which all still would incorporate parts of your original work. And in this respect denying the need of freedom, a very similar position has led to the bad situation in the field of bible materials we're all currently in, because other people haven't considered freedom as an important issue (instead, they think integrity or profit etc. is). The hole point of your project is, as you stated, to produce a free English Bible in modern language (newly translated), but the need for it is solely based upon the fact that nobody else has already published a modern language Bible text under a free license. So you became the victim of the restrictive license policy of other people with the cost of having to invest all the time and work into your project (instead of having already such an text available and developing more advanced uses based on it), and you at the same time don't prevent that other people get such victims as a result of works which were derived from your work. But I can also look from the other side, the other perspective: could you name me any benefit which the freedom of loosing freedom generates? Well, individual freedom is indeed an important achievement in ethics, but when it gets related to the needs of a community vs. the needs of an individual, an emphasis on the individual could make the existence of a community impossible at all (if there's no freely licensed works the community can gather around). If an author of an derivative work has the intention to withhold freedom to others, I not only feel absolutely confident that denying this person the permission to do so is perfectly legitimate, I even believe that it is an crucial obligation to deny this person the right to deny freedom to other people, pretty much like Matthew 18,23-34. I'm aware that I can't change your mind about this if you have already fixed your position about it (on whatever basis), but I do at least hope that you might consider the reasons given above for future works. I know that re-licensing could look unfeasible or even impossible, but in any case I guess you're on your own to deal with either the required effort for relicensing or the consequences of such license policy with effects on yourself and other people as well. I and none of us can help your project about this issue, but at least I can make suggestions and try to initiate discussion about how the best way to reach our common goal, making Bible resources freely available and work with it, could look like. In fact it is mostly an awareness issue, because if bible translators, publishers and readers were only aware about all of this problems (aside from a definitively negative attitude, of course), we would be without doubt by far be better off.

skreut...@googlemail.com

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Aug 31, 2013, 8:55:14 PM8/31/13
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I just found this interesting book: http://distantshoresmedia.org/thechristiancommons - I don't know to which conclusions this book comes to, but it looks like to be well researched. It might give some independent and real-world arguments about the issue of Bible material licensing. If you guys find anything interesting in it, feel free to comment and discuss.

cceb...@gmail.com

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May 29, 2015, 6:43:45 PM5/29/15
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Hi Simon,

I am facing the same problem that you had in July 2013, 
"My main issue with InDesign is that it only handles one stream of footnotes, I'll need two (notes and cross-references). InDesign also can't span columns with footnotes, so if I'll want the main text in two columns but footnotes in just one, there's no-way to do that. Basically I'll need some plugin that offers an entirely new footnote system."

Could you please advise, using InDesign, how did you solve footnotes span in one column acrossing entire page, cross-references in two columns, while matching of the footnotes/cross-references and main text on the same page?  There is copyright issue involved in my case.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Joseph

 

On Wednesday, July 31, 2013 at 11:57:13 PM UTC-7, Simon Lindén wrote:
Hi!
This question may be outside the general scope of this forum but I figured I'll give it a try.

I know that UBS has a plugin for InDesign that helps in creating a print-ready insert of the Bible, but I have been denied access to this software by the local Bible Society. I now face the challenge of writing these scripts myself or finding out if there are similar scripts available someplace else (either as open-source or for a low cost), or possibly some other solution?

My main issue with InDesign is that it only handles one stream of footnotes, I'll need two (notes and cross-references). InDesign also can't span columns with footnotes, so if I'll want the main text in two columns but footnotes in just one, there's no-way to do that. Basically I'll need some plugin that offers an entirely new footnote system. See image for clarification.

Any suggestion would be helpful. How do InDesign users without access to UBS's software solve issues like these?


cceb...@gmail.com

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May 29, 2015, 6:43:45 PM5/29/15
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Hi Simon,

I am facing the same problem that you had in July 2013.  Could you please advise, using InDesign, how did you resolve the issues: footnotes in one column crossing entire page, cross-references in two columns, while their flows match main text on same page?  There is no copyright issues involved.   

Teus Benschop

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May 30, 2015, 2:50:15 AM5/30/15
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InDesign will be able to handle this situation, if I am not mistaken. Because the frames can be laid out per page and connected to frames on the next page, and so on, so that the text roughly flows where the user wants it. It involves manual tuning of the frame sizes per page, and how much text it contains. Teus.

Peter von Kaehne

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May 30, 2015, 3:26:53 AM5/30/15
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This will probably not be an answer to your immediate question, but
there is a second typesetting system which is open source which should
be able just fine to handle your problem of two sets of footnotes.

SIL has published a set of macros for XeTeX which take a set of USFM
files towards PDF. I do not have currently the URL, but it was somewhere
obvious the last time I looked.

And further, more experimental, CrossWire's swordengine contains now in
the current SVN head a new filterset which will spit out LaTeX. I
completed this a couple of months ago.

There are no classes/stylesheets yet written - this is my next task. I
would obviously welcome collaboration.

The idea of using the sword engine is mainly to do with the fact that
transforming any kind of input text format into OSIS XML will tease out
a quadrillion of minor and major flaws in the original translators'
files.

OSIS XML is kind of unforgiving for many of the things which go wrong in
e.g. USFM or other more haphazard ways of creating Bible source texts
(like MS Word). So, squeezing a text through that filter will fix a lot
of things which then will make typesetting hopefully a more enjoyable
experience.

To see what the sword engine currently produces in terms of LaTeX get
the newest SVN from CrossWire - instructions are here:

http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Tutorial:Compiling_%26_Installing_SWORD

Once downloaded, compiled and installed use the diatheke to give you
some LaTeX output:

diatheke -b KJV -o fmgnxM -f latex -k Philemon

Footnotes and crossreferences are producing separable output (though the
sample above has none of either).

Peter.


Russell Allen

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May 30, 2015, 5:26:17 AM5/30/15
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That's great news about the Sword engine. Is it using something like XSLT on the generated OSIS or something custom?

I suppose I should also mention my Usfm-Tools which has a generator to create ConTeXt files from Usfm. It's very flexible but you would probably need to know some python to customise it to what was needed. I recommend ConTeXt, it's really good.

Russell

https://github.com/openenglishbible/USFM-Tools
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Peter von Kaehne

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May 30, 2015, 6:51:01 AM5/30/15
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On Sat, 2015-05-30 at 19:26 +1000, Russell Allen wrote:
> That's great news about the Sword engine. Is it using something like XSLT on the generated OSIS or something custom?

libsword is a SAX like xml processor.

Peter

Chinese/English Bible

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May 30, 2015, 10:07:08 PM5/30/15
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Thank you for all the inputs.  I am attaching two pdf files which can explain the situation better

Footnotes in file 01 were manually generated in InDesign.  They were placed in a box at page bottom across entire page width.  This is what I want.  However, manually matching of footnotes and main text on each 2-facing pages is painful.

Footnotes in file 02 were generated using InDesign's footnotes feature.  The matching of footnotes and main text is adjusted automatically.  However, The footnotes stay in the same box which main text is using, not across entire page width. 

I am looking for an InDesign plugin which can expand footnotes box to entire page width, and still keep footnotes matching on each 2-facing pages.  Very appreciate for any suggestions. 


Peter.


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01 width of footnotes is correct.pdf
02 width of footnotes needs to expand.pdf

Stephan Kreutzer

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Jun 12, 2015, 8:00:15 AM6/12/15
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Maybe the LaTeX packages eledmac (http://www.freie-bibel.de/official/projekt/hag2latex11.png) and bigfoot (http://www.freie-bibel.de/official/projekt/hag2latex6.png) could be combined, while using bigfoot may require some manual work on every few pages in some cases. I convert OSIS to Haggai XML (like Zefania XML for reasons described by Peter von Kaehne) to XeLaTeX. You also might want to look into SILE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BIP_N9qQm4).
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