How will OSIS interact with Standard Format Markers (SFM), and other existing ways of marking up text?
Conceptually, SFM and OSIS are quite similar; both focus on marking parts of the text primarily for what they are, rather than how they may happen to appear in some particular edition. Thus, SFM texts are fairly easy to convert to and from OSIS, and SFM users should be able to gain benefit from OSIS quickly. OSIS has some potential advantages over SFM. By virtue of being XML, OSIS texts can be used with a wide and fast-growing range of software tools. OSIS also has a more robust way of encoding nested structures, from lists to poems to genealogies. Also, OSIS has no variant forms; whereas historically many variations on SFM have arisen (there is work underway to normalize this situation for SFM). And finally, OSIS has a formal definition expressed in the XML Schema language, so computers can confirm systematically whether a document does or does not follow the specification.
