[osis-core] Selah

[Kirk Lowery]

Todd Tillinghast wrote:

> My problem is that when I look in the toolbox I don't find a tool that
> readily addresses the markup need.
> 
> I agree that some people may not want/need to do anything special with
> it, but there are a reasonable number of others that do make a clear
> distinction between selah and other text.

Maybe this is a repeat of previous discussion; if so, please point me to 
it. What is the need? To mark it for special processing? Or mark it for 
special information? Can't one of the other elements do the job, with an 
attribute? Can't we create a <seg type="selah"> or some other element 
with a "selah" attribute?

> Are you suggesting that the text "selah" is not in original text?  If so
> what was in the original text that leads translators to put a "selah" in
> the translated work?

As you mean "original", it is in the original text. Whether it was added 
after the original composition is a matter of debate -- over incomplete 
evidence. That's outside the scope of OSIS! For all practical purposes, 
it is original.

Can we put a finer point on the use case? What is it people want? What 
do they think it is? So far, I see:

1. identify the span of text 'selah'
2. format it in a special way for printing/display

For any kind of post-processing, string search should cover any need. If 
one is going to create a special element or attribute, then it seems to 
me we've got to define what selah is: a linguistic phenomenon, literary, 
marginal/foot- note (by the original author), or ... ? That will tell us 
  whether to associate it with another already-existing element, or 
create a separate one.

A suggestion: we make an attribute string 'selah' available to all the 
elements that might conceivably use it. There is no finer analysis or 
other characteristic belonging to 'selah' except that it is, and that it 
occurs at a specific point in the text, so nothing else is needed. The 
choice of which element to add to the 'selah' attribute string will 
depend on what the encoder thinks Selah *is*. Problem is that there will 
be more than one opinion. So we could just let them identify an element 
as "selah-ish". ;=D

My $0.02.

Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt.
Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum.
Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint:
nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!