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From OpenSiddurProject

A page from the proof of concept Haggadah, demonstrating support for automatic transliteration, and translations, side by side, color coded text, and footnote citations. One goal of the project is to allow fully customized prints from a single format.

Welcome to the Open Siddur Project Development Wiki.

Introduction

The Open Siddur Project aims to produce a free software, web-based toolkit for users to prepare siddurim and other high quality Jewish liturgical works (such as haggadot and bentchers) to be printed out, shared online, or accessed via e-readers. In a general sense, the application we're developing might be called a collaborative publishing platform: collaborative like a wiki but designed with the ultimate goal of generating print media. (Unlike a wiki, individual users are given the choice of which material that they'd like to share that they've modified or authored.) Online, the platform will provide a space for individual users to select from, author, and share all the components of a siddur including prayers, translations, commentaries, art, and layout templates for incorporation in new, custom designed siddurim. Alternately, the platform could be used as a novel educational tool for the study of Jewish liturgy.

Our project's mission encompasses the values of pluralism (acceptance for the diversity of Jewish cultural expression), historical awareness (the text of the siddur is an aggregate of thousands of years of creatively inspired works), and individual freedom.

Broadly, the project is divided in two parts:

Content gathering and preparation

• scanning of public domain works,
• transcription (typing) of those materials,
• proofreading them for accuracy,
• and encoding them for our archive.
• For works that are not yet in the public domain, the Open Siddur Project receives and encodes new, original material contributed under free culture licenses. All encoded content is entered into our database, making it accessible through our web application(s).

and Software development, i.e., the design and coding of the following:

• specifications of the XML-based format in which we archive the project's texts,
• transforms to convert the XML-encoded documents into print- or display-ready formats,
• the eXist-based native XML database that contains the data,
• and the web-based application infrastructure used by developers and end users for editing, retrieving and remixing the texts we provide.

Development status

Summary of current development status:

Summary diagram of data flow within the project architecture.

• Development is progressing on the backend technologies and on the end user interface.
• We are looking for volunteer developers.
• We are looking for accurate typists and careful proofreaders for both Hebrew and English texts.
• We have also made progress toward specific development milestones.
• Our earliest proof-of-concept (a command line application) is available from our subversion server. Development on this proof of concept is now frozen. All active development effort is directed toward the database/web application architecture.

Getting Started As A Contributor

This is a free software/open source project. It makes progress because volunteers put their time into making it work.

The first step to joining the project is joining the general mailing list and/or the technical mailing list. Let us know who you are and what you are interested in doing.

You may also tell us about yourself by filling out our survey.

Check out what we've done so far. A demonstration of our technology is now available.

Got any ideas for new ways to use the Open Siddur? Put them in the Brainstorm session.

• The easiest way to get started immediately is as a text transcriber. To get started click here.

See the milestones page and the links from there to find out where active development is taking place now. All software under development is available on our subversion repository at Google code. The trunk contains the most recent source code; it may be broken at any time. For an introduction to coding for the project, see Intro to hacking.

How you can help us

Progress on each of these is being tracked at the milestones page. While the intro to hacking is under construction, the best way to get involved in coding is to contact us on the technical discussion list or fill out our survey.

Information

• Project page on Google code (includes instructions for subversion access).
• Environmental Scan: Other related projects.
• Relevant links
• Copyright and Licensing

Social networking

• Follow the opensiddur feed on Twitter.
• Join our Facebook group.
• Follow the development blog.

Getting Help

• Read the FAQ!
• Join and post to the general email discussion list
• Join and post to the technical email discussion list
• Talk to us in the IRC developer channel. No one is guaranteed to be there to answer questions. Please see IRC to join the channel.
• Contact us via email.

Reporting Errors and Bugs

Problems may be reported and discussed on the technical discussion list. Bug reports should be submitted to the issue tracker on Google code.