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Development

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. 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:

  • Development is progressing on the backend technologies and on the end user interface.
  • We are looking for volunteer developers.
  • We are looking for accurate Hebrew typists.
  • 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.

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 discussion list or fill out our survey.

Information

Social networking

Getting Help

  • Join the mailing List
  • Use the discussion pages on the wiki
  • IRC developer channel. No one is guaranteed to be there to answer questions. Please read IRC to join the channel.

Reporting Errors and Bugs

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