Review of USFM / USX 3.0 Proposal Documents

Question

Hello,

I am writing as a representative of a small task team assigned to review proposals for what becomes a formal update to USFM and USX (3.0). The current documentation for the 3.0 proposal includes a mix of new markup proposals, changes / corrections to the definitions for marker validity (i.e. the usfm.sty stylesheet rules, and USX schema), and proposals for deprecating some existing markup.

Two of the more notable additions are 1) a proposed syntax for adding descriptive attributes to words (character level markers) in USFM / USX and 2) a proposed syntax for defining linking in USFM / USX.

The 3.0 proposal is an attempt to summarize collected input from users, and to provide standard solutions in USFM and USX for various archiving and publication needs (especially in light of digital).

It would be helpful at this time to have a somewhat larger body of interested people review the current documentation, and comment. Input might come from users or tool developers. This will help to ensure that important needs are not missed or inadequately addressed - but is not intending to imply that all new requests would be immediately included in USFM / USX 3.0 (there’s always 3.1!)

If you would like to engage in reviewing / commenting on the current proposal documentation, please contact me directly off-list, and I will be able to share the necessary information with you.

Thank you.

jmkla
[Email Removed]

Answer 1

Is there a way that any of us can suggest additions to USFM? For example, I had a couple of ideas recently …

One is a marker to quote text literally – text that would otherwise be interpreted as a marker or special character (e.g. when you want a project to contain the text “http://…”) – see my brief discussion of it here: Guide: File > Print Draft .

Another would be a clause-divider marker: in the language I work in, we often have long sentences with no commas. In a SAB-built* app with text highlighting at a phrase level during audio playback, it would be nice to be able to divide a long sentence into two or three with a marker that aeneas^† would treat as punctuation. Though I guess we could use a hidden space, and tell aeneas that this is a punctuation character; or, if we wanted a visible character, we could use, say, a hash (#), and then have PrintDraftChanges.txt remove hashes at publication time.

But if we had a marker for this, we might also have a marker for no-clause-divide: our language also sometimes has sentences with far too many commas, and that looks silly when an SAB app reads the text. With this marker, you could mark a comma or other punctuation mark so that it is ignored by aeneas.

* Scripture App Builder
^† aeneas is a program that automatically calculates the timings of the punctuation marks that you select. It was developed for use with SAB. The same markers I’m suggesting could also be used by teams that mark the timings manually: in this case the punctuation marks (and, in my suggestion, also markers) divide up the script that SAB outputs, and which aids the person listening to the audio.

Comments

wdavidhj, (others)

You can engage with the USFM issues backlog in Github, here:

GitHub

ubsicap/usfm

Unified Standard Format Markers. Contribute to ubsicap/usfm development by creating an account on GitHub.

The current open issues / comments / ideas are here: https://github.com/ubsicap/usfm/issues

The items intended in 3.0.0 are here: https://github.com/ubsicap/usfm/milestone/2
(there are some open items, some of which relate to need for adjustments to documentation or stylesheets; a few new items yet).

3.0.0 support in Paratext will not happen officially until PT 8.1. Some items in USFM 3 will require more and less support from the editor – and it may not all receive a final polished treatment, but will work with checking tools. Items such as Ruby support for CJK texts will have some substantial UI / editor support in Paratext.

The documentation is built from this repository, and the current version can be found at.
https://ubsicap.github.io/usfm/

jmkla

Answer 2

I see that Paratext 8.0.83.1 still comes with USFM 2.502. Is that still the latest approved USFM standard? Is USFM 3.0.0 still just a proposal?