[osis-core] paren

[Patrick Durusau]

Troy,

Troy A. Griffitts wrote:

>> What is the purpose of a <paren> element?
>>
>> It doesn't seem that there is any significance to passages that would 
>> be marked with them other than the fact that they are inside 
>> parentheses (which seem like adequate "markup" to me).  Is there some 
>> reason for which they would need to be accessed specifically or 
>> rendered or otherwise treated differently from other text?
>
>
> Not sure, probably the same so, as with other tags like salutation, 
> etc.  Maybe someone would wish to render this differently.  Dunno.  
> Anyone else have thoughts.  I just came across some () in text and 
> though we should tag them with something besides '()'.

The reason for marking a salutation is that it is a distinct part of a 
letter (for example, Ephesians 1:1-2, Colossians 1:1-2) and not 
necessarily to be rendered differently. May well be in most 
translations, but what if I want to study the various salutations? If 
marked as distinct elements, then I can extract or search salutations as 
distinct from other parts of the letter, such as the closer.

Since I don't have the NKJV in electronic format I can't search it for 
all occurrences of the use of '()' but the one that you cited does not 
mark anything that I recognize as somehow distinct from the surrounding 
text. Someone who does recognize that portion of text as distinct, 
should mark it with the appropriate element. While typography often 
offers important clues as to a structure that should be encoded, there 
are no doubt cases when typography is just that, typography for reasons 
unrelated to any structure in the text. (Whether this is the case in the 
instance you cited or not I cannot say with certainty. All I can say is 
that I don't see any structure in the text that is being marked.)

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu