IapetosIapetos Bible Format
The Iapetos Bible Format is a set of tags for marking elements within Bible texts. IBF tags define books, chapters, verses, paragraphs, poetry and other elements, allowing feature-full use of Bible texts on web pages and desktop Bible study applications. See the Bible page for examples.
IBF is an adaptation of the General Bible Format (GBF) by the folks at ebible.org. A comparison between the two reveals that we have eliminated some of the tag sets we consider extraneous in the GBF while extending other areas of the GBF. In general we've cut everything in the GBF that doesn't deal with the actual text of the Bible and added tags for better handling of poetry and certain features of Bible texts like digits, time references, measures of things, places, names and quotes.
There are a few other tagging specifications available for Bible texts, such as OSIS. These tagging specifications are based on XML, and designed to be flexible "as a common format for many visions." The down side to these systems are their lengthy tags that make working directly in the text of the Bible disorienting and greatly increase the file size. In contrast IBF is lightweight and easy to use.
The IBF Tagging Specification is here.