Open Bible Markup Language

This project will publish chapters in the Open Bible Markup Language (OBML). Prior to publication, content will be worked on in a "loose" OBML way; that is, generally following the standards of OBML but not necessarily strictly formatted as such.

The Open Bible Markup Language (OBML) is a pure-ASCII-text markup way to represent Bible content, one whole text file per chapter. The goal or purpose of OBML is similar to Markdown in that it provides a human-readable text file allowing for simple and direct editing of content while maintaining context, footnotes, cross-references, "red text", and quotes.

Markup Standards/Conventions

OBML makes the assumption that content will exist in one text file per chapter, the text file will be ASCII, and content mark-up will conform to the following specification:

~...~    --> material reference
=...=    --> header
{...}    --> crossreferences
[...]    --> footnotes
<...>    --> red text
^...^    --> italic
4 spaces --> blockquote (line by line)
6 spaces --> blockquote + indent (line by line)
|*|      --> notes the beginning of a verse (numbers ignored)
#        --> line comments

An example of OBML follows, with several verses missing so as to save space:

~ Jude 1 ~

|1| Jude, [or ^Judas^] {Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3; Jhn 14:22; Ac 1:13} a
slave [or ^servant^] {Ti 1:1} of Jesus Christ, and
brother of James, [or ^Jacob^] to those having been set apart [or
^loved^ or ^sanctified^] in God ^the^ Father.

= The Sin and Punishment of the Ungodly =

|14| Enoch, {Ge 5:18; Ge 5:21-24} ^the^ seventh from Adam, also
prophesied to these saying:

    Behold, ^the^ Lord came with myriads of His saints [or ^holy
    ones^] {De 33:2; Da 7:10; Mt 16:27; He 12:22}
    |15| to do judgment against all {2Pt 2:6-9}.

|16| These are murmurers, complainers, {Nu 16:11; Nu 16:41; 1Co
10:10} following ^after^ [or ^according to^] their
lusts, {Jdg 1:18; 2Pt 2:10} and their mouths speak of proud things
{2Pt 2:18} ^showing admiration^ [literally ^admiring faces^] to gain
^an advantage^. [literally ^for the sake of you^] {2Pt 2:3}

Specific OBML Concepts

A few things to keep in mind as far as OBML goes:

• Line length does not matter. Lines can be of any length. What OBML understands is "blocks" of content, or paragraphs. Humans writing OBML in a text editor can let the lines wrap automatically by the text editor. OBML computer parses, however, will tend to output blocks of OBML with lines broken at under 80 characters in length.
• Spacing does not matter but should exist. It is entirely possible to write "|14|Start of verse"; however, it's more clear to include a space after the verse reference like this: "|14| Start of verse"
• CRs and FNs should be after punctuation. All footnotes and crossreferences, being that they are embedded in the text, should be written after all concluding punctuation and a space. See the Jude 1 OBML example above.
• FNs should appear before CRs if they exist in the same location with nothing between them.