The Basics

The Open Siddur client is a means for contributing and editing liturgical texts, whether original or freely licensed from another source. The system is designed to maximize the possibilities for using and modifying contributions and to minimize redundancies in the Open Siddur database. Texts are encoded in an XML-based format called JLPTEI (Jewish Liturgy Project - Text Encoding Initiative), which was created with these goals in mind. (For more on JLPTEI and the principles behind it, see About JLPTEI.)

At present, contributing and encoding texts requires a basic knowledge of XML. If you do not know XML or need a refresher, we recommend reading A Gentle Introduction to XML from the Text Encoding Initiative.

###Getting Started

A key principle behind Open Siddur's approach is that texts are broken into the smallest logical units possible. If you want to contribute an entire prayer book, for example, you will begin by creating a file for an individual prayer. Complex, multipart prayers should be broken into smaller units. For example, the weekday Amidah prayer might be divided into its nineteen component blessings. You would create a separate file for each of these blessings and then create a file for the weekday Amidah, which would link to the files with the blessings. You would also create a file for the complete prayer book, which would link to the Amidah file.

One advantage of this method is that it reduces the need for an individual text to be entered more than once. Within a given liturgical tradition, the first and last three blessings of the Amidah occur in every version of the prayer (albeit with some variations), whereas the other blessings vary depending on whether it is a weekday, Shabbat, or a festival. With a separate file for each blessing, texts can easily be reused in different liturgical contexts.

When you encode the text, you will divide it into even smaller units, called "segments," consisting of about 1–6 words. These divisions enable minute variations in the liturgy (for example, adding or removing the lines included in the Amidah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and allow texts to be linked to translations, transliterations, and commentaries in a variety of ways.

Any of these divisions, large or small, involves an element of subjectivity. This may be especially true of original contributions, which should be broken up however the contributor thinks best.

###Overview of the Process

Once you have chosen a unit of text to contribute, you will enter metadata about the yourself by creating a profile and the text by creating a bibliography entry. The Open Siddur client provides forms for entering this information.

The text itself is entered and encoded in an XML editor, which provides a template for marking up the text. The editor also has other helpful features [link] that make the process simpler and spare the user from having to enter all the code manually.