Remove unimplemented beta flavors: typesetScripture, embossedBrailleScripture, signLanguageVideoTranslation, textStories

[jonathanrobie]

Background

Four flavors were included in earlier versions of the spec but were never implemented by any known tool and have no current maintainer:

• typesetScripture (Scripture Print)
• embossedBrailleScripture (Scripture Braille)
• signLanguageVideoTranslation (Scripture Sign Language)
• textStories (Gloss / Scriptural Text Stories)

Their schemas, examples, and documentation pages were removed from the develop branch (commit 8e5725d). The removal was made without a tracked issue.

What was removed

• schema/scripture/embossed_braille_scripture.schema.json
• schema/scripture/sign_language_video_translation.schema.json
• schema/scripture/typeset_scripture.schema.json
• schema/gloss/text_stories.schema.json
• Associated documentation and example files

Rationale

These flavors were designed but never built out. No known Scripture Burrito tool produces or consumes them, and no standard examples exist. Keeping them in the spec creates confusion and maintenance burden.

Open questions

• Should any of these be reintroduced in a future version with proper implementation?
• Do any known users need a migration path?

[chrisvire]

Hold on ... textStories were implemented by unfoldingWord, and I am about to include support for them in Scripture App Builder and Reading App Builder.

How to get a textStories bundle:

1. go to https://git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_obs/src/branch/master
2. select Files > Convert to SB ZIP

3. you will see that the metadata.json has this:

{
  "format": "scripture burrito",
  [snip]
  "type": {
    "flavorType": {
      "name": "gloss",
      "flavor": {
        "name": "textStories"
      },
      "currentScope": {
        [snip]
       }
  },
  "copyright": {
    "shortStatements": [
      {
        "statement": "Copyright © 2023 by unfoldingWord"
      }
    ]
  }
}

[mvahowe]

What Chris says. You're ignoring the largest collection of Burritos in the world, and textStories have been implemented by at least two processors (Scribe and Pankosmia) plus now PTXPrint.

Unilaterally removing things from a standard isn't a thing.

[mvahowe]

Wait

No known Scripture Burrito tool produces or consumes them

Do any known users need a migration path?

So you're asking about known users of something you claim doesn't exist?!

[mvahowe]

And the word 'beta' here is disingenious, it appears nowhere in the 1.0 spec wrt textStories. The technical term for all this is 'vandalism'.

[mvahowe]

no standard examples exist

No standard examples exist now because they were deleted!

Who removed the standard examples?

So, to summarise, you're deleting things so you can say they never existed so you can remove them from a standard in order to... I'm not sure of the hidden agenda here but it's hard to believe that there isn't one.

[chrisvire]

What Chris says. You're ignoring the largest collection of Burritos in the world, and textStories have been implemented by at least two processors (Scribe and Pankosmia) plus now PTXPrint.

Is PTXprint going to be supporting typesetScripture?

[chrisvire]

For now, should I refer to to v1.0.0 for our documentation?

https://docs.burrito.bible/en/v1.0.0/flavors/scriptural_text_stories_flavor.html#scriptural-text-stories-flavor

[birchamp]

@chrisvire that's what Rich is going to do for now - using the V1.0.0

[birchamp]

All of that to say @jonathanrobie that we'd really like to keep textStories, and we're about to move into scripture formatted for print so we'd like to keep typesetScripture as well.

[mvahowe]

Is PTXprint going to be supporting typesetScripture?

Typeset Scripture was originally designed by me to handle an InDesign story-based format (IDTT?) at the suggestion of Kent Spielman. I don't think that anyone ever used it this way. I haven't looked to see whether we can make it work for other workflows such as PTXPrint or our own PagedJS-based tools.

According to the 1.0.0 release, extending existing flavors and adding new ones through community discussion is what the SB committee was supposed to do next. What actually happened is the polar opposite of that community-driven approach. That was not an accident.

Removing existing features is very very hard if you want a standard to survive. See, for example, the W3C XML Schema standard. 1.0 was felt to be bloated. A survey showed that each user used a tiny fraction of the spec - but that someone somewhere used every part of the spec. In the end 1.1 removed nothing and added more features. The only mainsteeam standard I know of that removed features is ePub (3.0 to 3.1) and that standard is considered to be a train wreck in terms of adoption. Even in that case, there was a committee and a version change.

The open source solution to capricious, unilateral behaviour by project owners is forking, not begging for clemency.

[mvahowe]

I gather that the committee now claims that 1.0.0 was in fact 1.0.0 alpha. Hmm, let's see...

Can someone explain how we go from rc3 to 1.0.0 to alpha? This claim does not have truth as a dependency.

[mvahowe]

Oh, there's a 1.0.0 milestone too. Can someone help me see 1.0.0 alpha in this list?

[mvahowe]

This was the first of 27 commits by @jonathanrobie in 2 hours and 39 minutes. That's one commit changing a public specification every six minutes. Can we have insight to what the oversight process for 10 commits per hour looks like?

@joelthe1 You apparently signed off on this, despite your own project having implemented the textStories flavor. How does that work?

[mvahowe]

@joelthe1 Here's a clue - the homepage of your project: https://docs.scribe.bible

it allows translators to import and export Scripture Burrito format

Scribe SE supports different flavours such as Bible Translation, Open Bible Stories (OBS)...

Help me to understand

never implemented by any known tool

above. Thanks.