[jsword-devel] Software Best Practices

[Peter von Kaehne]

Sounds good.

Brian Fernandes wrote:
> 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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> 
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