[jsword-devel] Software Best Practices

[Brian Fernandes]

I have been following the "parallel display with WLC" conversation about 
display issues with interest from the sidelines. It seemed to branch out 
to cover much more than the original subject.

It would be cool if all this was captured in the wiki under "Best 
Practices" or something like that, but *without* any OS / implementation 
constraints mentioned (or mentioned as separate notes). In other words, 
it would be good to see a list of what would be the ideal goal, with 
side notes (or other pages) on why it may not be achievable on a 
particular OS or using a particular library / language. This is so that 
differently constrained developers are still able to benefit from these 
guidelines without having to read through notes not applicable to them.

I'm new to this space and besides English, I doubt I am a good judge of 
how users would like to read the bible, especially RtoL versions. So I 
find myself spending time researching existing software for "what do 
they do" instead of referring to some generally agreed upon guidelines.

For example, here is an example of what I'm looking for (I just made 
them up, they're not intended to be "real guidelines"):

Note presentation:
By default, notes should be displayed on the left of the text for LtoR 
bibles but on the right for RtoL bibles.

Note preferences:
There should be a preference allowing the user to turn off notes 
entirely or force the notes to a particular side of the text, 
irrespective of the text direction.

Best Fonts for languages: (I just noticed that there already is a page 
on fonts here http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Fonts)
English: Arial (or equivalents for non Win OSes)
Hebrew: Ezra SIL
...

I'm trying to pick up FireBible again, but I always get sidetracked 
trying to find answers to these sorts of questions.

Thoughts?
Brian.



DM Smith wrote:
> On May 2, 2008, at 9:07 AM, Daniel Glassey wrote:
> 
>> 2008/5/2 DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com>:
>>> On Linux, it is especially important to find, install and use a  
>>> good default
>>> font for English. The one supplied with Java is not all that good.  
>>> It is
>>> possible to find and install MS fonts. Arial is especially good.
>> Is there anything wrong with DejaVu that comes as the default with
>> most Linux distributions now? (I haven't looked to see what BS does on
>> Linux so just curious).
> 
> Daniel,
> I don't know if there is anything wrong with DejaVu. I am not familiar  
> enough with it.
> 
> The best font for BibleDesktop has the following characteristics:
> TrueType (though OpenType may work for some platforms)
> 
> It is a relatively complete Unicode font. This allows parallel display  
> of different scripts (e.g. Western European, Simplified Chinese,  
> Traditional Chinese, Farsi, Arabic, Hebrew). I find that some fonts  
> look good for one kind of script but not others. We have a feature  
> request to allow parallel columns to used different fonts.
> 
> It supports Farsi, which is like Arabic but has a few extra  
> characters. (Java's Unicode font does not have this)
> 
> It supports the ligation of adjacent letters.
> 
> It supports alternate glyph forms for a single code point, where the  
> glyph varies by context. (An example of a character that differs by  
> context is the Greek sigma. This is not a particularly good example,  
> since the final sigma has it's own code point.)
> 
> That it is free of cost.
> 
> 
> Because Java uses Arial as it's default on Windows and because it  
> satisfies the above, (according to Peter) it is easy to recommend. I  
> cannot evaluate whether Farsi looks good or is handled well in a  
> particular font.
> 
> It might be good to enhance the wiki at http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Fonts 
>   with the best fonts by language.
> 
> DM
> 
> 
> 
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