Re: Quranic Proposal

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Salaam Nadim and Tom,

> would your "group of people" (not
> sure how many there are) be OK with using you as
> their representative ?

Actually any of our names don't even need to be
mentioned at all, we would just like to participate.
But if it is necessary to mention a name, you can use
my name.

> All in all, my suggestion is to produce a joint
> document that prescribes how
> to encode Qur'anic text in a uniform way using a
> combination of Unicode
> characters, well-designed fonts and adequate font
> technology as well as
> standard mark-up (i.e., XML).

I think this is a great idea: "A joint document that
prescribes how to encode Qur'anic text in a uniform
way". 

We have some ideas in the realm of XML markup of the
Quran: A standard XML markup for representing the
Quran text would be very beneficial indeed, not just
for the original Arabic text of the Quran, but also
for translations of the Quran in other languages. We
have done some work in this field and come up with a
few XML schemas for representing Arabic Quran text and
translation text. Basically we have three XML schemas;
quran_xx.xml, footnotes_xx.xml, and subtitles_xx.xml.

quran_xx.xml represents the text of the Quran. This is
the only XML file that is necessary for the Arabic
Quran since there are no footnotes or subtitles.
Translations of the Quran may have accompanying
footnotes and subtitles which are represented in
footnotes_xx.xml and subtitles_xx.xml.

Vaguely the format for each one of these files is as
follows:

quran_xx.xml:

<quran ..>
  <chapter no="1" name="..." ...>
    <verse no="1">......</verse>
    <verse no="2">......</verse>
    .....
  </chapter>
  <chapter no="2"....>
    ......
  </chapter>
  ......
</quran>

footnotes_xx.xml:

<footnotes ..>
  <chapter no="1">
    <footnote no="2">....</footnote>
    <footnote no="2.2">....</footnote>
    .....
  </chapter>
  <chapter no=2">
    .....
  </chapter>
  .....
</footnotes>

subtitles_xx.xml:

<subtitles ..>
  <chapter no="2">
    <subtitle no="2">....</subtitle>
    <subtitle no="4">....</subtitle>
    .....
  </chapter>
  <chapter no=2">
    .....
  </chapter>
  .....
</subtitles>

Although lately we have explored other XML schema
options and we have found a powerful XML schema that
is used to encode the Bible. The standard is called
OSIS (Open Scripture Information Standard) and it is
from a group called the Bible Technologies Group
(http://www.bibletechnologies.net). We have
corresponded with them and they have agreed to keep
the OSIS standard generic such that the Quran can be
encoded using this standard as much as the Bible can.
In fact Patrick Durusau from the core Bible
Technologies Group have expressed that he has personal
interest in encoding the Quran in OSIS also.
Additionally we found that someone has already encoded
the Quran in OSIS in both original Arabic and an
English translation. So I suggest that you take a look
at OSIS at http://www.bibletechnologies.net and let us
know what you think of using the OSIS XML schema in
order to encode the Quran in both original Arabic and
translations.

Kind regards,
Mete Kural