[sword-devel] Doctrinal Statement

[Matthias Ansorg]

Hi all,

I know that my comment on this issue is quite late, but I had no
internet access for the last weeks.

Chris Little wrote:
>>> I do think we should make it clear, however, to our users what
>>> material is Christian and what is not through labelling.

Geoffrey Hastings wrote:
>> Maybe the place to put this kind of information would be in the
>> help contents under the modules section. A section on module
>> background information. Then if the module discription warranted a
>> paragraph you could have a whole paragraph. You could then include
>> information about the author/authors and their backgrounds, beliefs
>> and other works they may have done.
>> As far as downloading the modules. Other sections could be added
>> to the Crosswire site and clearly labled as to what they are for
>> those who >wished to download them. ie. Non-Christian Topics and
>> Reference Works.

Darwin Gregory wrote:
> I would like to suggest even expanding this concept.  Let's take it 
> a step  further.  I think it would be helpful for novices to have a
> method for determining which commentaries come from which angles etc.
> This could be a lengthy process to define the categories, but could 
> be extremely useful in the long run.
> The categorization would be partly based on the opinion of the 
> distributor, but could be helpful.

I like this concept that Chris, Darwin and Geoffrey developed, too.
As for me, it would have be extremely helpful to know the doctrinal
direction of a commentary before downloading and using it for
preparations for bible lessons etc. (to know if it's biblical
coorrect what I download).

Let's go into the technical details. The SWORD design of the modules
includes in each module (for bibles and commentaries) the sections
»module intro«, »testament intro« for OT and NT and »chapter intro«
for each chapter, but all these are unused up to now.

So I would rather suggest to put the background information
(doctrinal direction, type of document, author, author's biography,
...) into the module itself (»module intro«) instead of the
crosswire homepage.

Advantages:
-- frontend access to the module background information
-- the user doesn't have to manage his modules and the background
information separately, only the modules. You don't need to add a
extra file to the module distribution and solve the issue within
the current SWORD design.
-- a cgi script could be used to extract the module background
information from a module and display it on the crosswire homepage.
That way, the user can evaluate a module before downloading (as
Geoffrey suggested) and the effort for upating a module's background
information is small (update the module, you don't need to update the
corresponding web page, too).

With love in Christ Jesus,
-- Matthias