[sword-devel] Problems making SWORD module...

[Chris Little]

> Actually, I find the Sword commentary window to be very 
> annoying in that it only displays a verse at a time. 
> Shouldn't it display a whole chapter 
> just like
> with the bible module and highlight the current verse?

Maybe we'll give users the options of toggling between those two modes
in BibleCS 2.0
 
> The thing is, if I have these commentaries that apply to 
> several verses, 
> what do
> I do? Add them to each verse they apply to? Or only to the 
> first verse? Both options are lame in their own way which is 
> why I think it is right to 
> see a whole
> chapter at once and make it more like the real thing.

My feeling is that when you query a particular verse reference, it
should return all the text relating to that entry.  So if you have a
section entry for Gen 1:1-5 and a individual verse entries for each of
Gen 1:1-5, then querying Gen 1:3 should return the section entry and the
verse entry.  Presently that requires adding the whole block to each
individual verse, which means the section entry will be repeated 5 times
in the data file.  It might be smart to add a linking mechanism similar
to that of our LD modules that allows multiple other entries to be
linked to by a single entry.  Presently we only allow linking to a
single entry per verse (obviously).

> >addvs doesn't handle this.  It probably wouldn't be too difficult to 
> >check if a verse already contains data, then add to it and 
> create a new 
> >entry if so.
> >
> This is pretty lame. What if someone implements the above 
> scheme, at least as an option?

Feel free.  Repeat the mantra after me: "cvs co sword, fix it, and
submit a patch".
 
> >You would then want to clean out the excess entries, such
> >as by running mod2zmod on the module.
> >
> I don't know what this means.

When you replace an entry, the old entry remains in the data file.  To
remove the unused and inaccessible entries, you need to rebuild the
module by querying each entry and writing it out anew.  But mod2zmod
will do this for you in the process of compression.

> >I guess you could download one of the Windows .zips from 
> CrossWire and 
> >replace the data.zip enclosed in it with one that uses your module's 
> >files & directory structure.  We don't handle single file installers 
> >because we have InstallMgr, which makes installation even easier.
> >
> Let me put it this way... In what form do you accept the data from 
> submitters?
> I would have thought it pretty convenient that there would be 
> some form that these things can be moved around as one file - 
> an extreme example - maybe people in the 3rd world don't have 
> internet connections and need to get modules from friends. 
> And maybe they don't use Windows either. Shouldn't there be a 
> platform independant, one-file distribution format?

.zips work for me.  I can figure out what goes where and usually need to
compress or otherwise clean up modules that get submitted.

--Chris