Theological Markup Language (ThML)
This document describes Theological Markup Language, used to mark up
texts for the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and other projects.
This XML application can be thought of as HTML with additions for
electronic books and rich digital libraries and special
support for theological needs such as scripture references and
Strongs numberings. When books have been prepared in ThML, many new
features of will become possible in the CCEL: subject and
scripture reference indexes for books and for the whole library, more
intelligent searching, automatic conversion to other formats, and more.
ThML documents can be prepared in Microsoft Word -- some tools are
provided for that purpose -- or edited directly with an XML editor
or text editor. The tools used with ThML documents run under
Unix or Windows. Tool currently exist for converting from Word/RTF
to ThML and from ThML to HTML webs.
The following information is available on ThML and related topics:
Sample ThML documents. Several documents are available in
ThML -- these have an xml extension. These have been converted to
HTML webs, and in many cases an RTF source version is available as
well. If so, the ThML version is derived from the RTF version by
programs listed below. The HTML version is linked below; other
versions are accessible from the title page. Note: these
versions have been updated for ThML0993, the XML version of ThML.
You should download the xml files to your disk -- some browsers
have trouble trying to load XML.
If you are interested in discussing markup for theological texts
and scripture -- what information is needed for theological study or
for your application -- or ThML in particular, you can join the ThML
mailing list. To join, send a message to
[email protected]. The body of the message should contain
the line "subscribe thmllist" without the quotes. To unsubscribe,
do the same with a message containing "unsubscribe thmllist".
Other Projects using ThML
- @The OpenBible
Project -- A project to develop free Bible study software for
Unix, which will use ThML documents
For you SGML/XML types:
The current version of the DTD is available (ThML099.dtd). Since this DTD includes
the HTML 4 strict DTD, it is an SGML DTD, not XML. Update:
the @draft XML DTD (version 0.993)
is available. With this DTD, ThML documents are XML documents and
there is no separate SGML version.
You can get everything you need to validate ThML, convert rtf to
ThML and HTML, etc. under DOS in one zipfile, @ThML.zip, or for unix, @ThML.tgz. In the unix case,
you will need to install the SP package -- see @How to get SP.
You will also need to install rtf2xml if you are starting
from Word files.
Update: software for processing ThML 0.993 documents
is also available for DOS (@thmlx.zip) or
unix (@thmlx.tgz). This software has
remaining bugs, but it works pretty well.
Help Wanted
- Try your hand at editing a ThML document
- Write scripts to convert content to ThML. For example, write a
script to convert the Online Bible text files to ThML.
(Check with me first about copyright, etc.)
- Prepare font mapping files to work with Skip Gaeda's program that
maps Greek and Hebrew fonts into Unicode. Or work on a program that
goes the other way: Unicode to particular Greek/Hebrew fonts.
- Write a Microsoft Word/Visual Basic for Applications program to
convert older CCEL word documents to the stylesheet used for ThML
- Write Word macros to help format documents in word for ThML
This document (last modified February 23, 1999) from Believerscafe.com