[sword-devel] STEP modules

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Steve, Kevin, and anyone else interested,

	There is a simple utility: stepdump that I just committed to cvs.  This
should dump any STEP compatible module.  It is NOT Bible text specific
so isn't everything we need for the STEPText module driver, but it is,
at least, a start.

	If anyone can save me some time, please point out in the docs where I
might find info on Bible specific modules.

Steve, if you feel ambitious... :) and still want to help.  The really
tough part of this project will be the RTF parsing (at least in my
opinion).  SWORD handles different markups by providing real-time
filters.  Traditionally, 2 are needed: the first to strip all tags away
(mostly used when searching), and the second for rendering.  Once we
finish the new 2 phase filter engine, only a STEPPlain (strip filter)
and STEPThML (or whatever we decide as an intermediate markup) will be
needed.  But for now, we know that we, at least, need at STEPPlain
filter class.  This should merely strip all markup from the text and
output 'Plain' text.  If you want to try, you can see some other filter
examples in sword/modules/filters/

OR....  If you know anything about the Bible reference lookup indexing
of a STEP Bible module, let's work together on that.

	-Troy.






>         I'm sorry that I haven't made more progress on the STEP modules.
> I've been planning on "getting around" to starting up again, but things are
> pretty busy at work.  I upgraded my Debian Linux box to 2.2, and finally got
> sound working so I can listen to music while I write.
> 
>         The next step is probably related to you're proposal.  I need to
> figure out what to do with the decompressed RTF text to make the STEP
> modules compatible with the regular modules.  Obviously, if RTF output is
> needed, that's no problem.  However, I suspect that the output needs to be
> something else, but I don't know what that is.  I'm somewhat daunted at the
> task at the moment, because I've never programmed in Linux, Gnome/GTK, or
> KDE/Qt, and I don't have a good understanding of how SWORD works, either.
> However, I would like to very much.  I am somewhat more familiar with Visual
> C++, but as far as I can tell, none of the SWORD modules are written using
> that.
> 
>         So... I would like to remain involved, and any help and direction
> you (and the other SWORD developers) are able to provide will be greatly
> appreciated.


> P.S. Thanks for the CDs.  I'm going to see if anyone at church is interested
> in SWORD.