[sword-devel] General Book Support

[Matthias Ansorg]

Hi all,

I realized that it's impossible to put all (my) biblical studies into
commentaries, because some deal with topics or questions. IMHO,
there's good reason to implement general book support for such
topical texts into SWORD (without creating bloatware by implementing
ordinary HTML browsing capabilities):

-- in religious topical works there are many references to the bible.
The easier it is to look them up, the more will the reader do that
and the deeper will his studies be. The easiest way would be to click
on a link (and optionally choosing context width and version
from a popup menu). This could be implemented in SWORD.
-- cross-referencing to other topical documents would be helpful
-- on the BibleTime mailing list they discussed a feature for writing
sermons. If SWORD provided general book support and possibilities to
write these books, all frontends would have access to sermons written
in BibleTime and no proprietary standard would be defined.
-- when doing biblical studies on a subject, an editor for SWORD's
general book support would be helpful (copying bible verses or verse
references, making references with drag&drop etc.).
-- if even text on biblical topics could be SWORD modules, it is
possible to create a general library of Christian literature for
SWORD, integrating _all_ availabe Christian literature.

As it's impossible to transfer the current SWORD indexed module
format to general book format, I'd suggest to use normal ThML
documents for the lattter. There are great possibilities for
interchange (with CCEL etc.), web publication (presenting ThML as
HTML is quite easy) and digital books / libraries (as this is the
purpose ThML was designed for).

I know that it's not that polite to make request a feature without
implementing it. So take it as suggestion 8^)

In Christ,
-- Matthias <><