[sword-devel] OSIS 1.5 / OSIS Editor

[Chris Little]

Simon wrote:

> Dear Chris,
> 
> Thanks for your reply, really some good ideas
> 
> 
>><div> structures in a tree are a good idea.  <p> structures might be
>>okay.  Smaller units like <divineName>, <hi>, or <reference> probably
>>shouldn't have their own tree nodes in a display.  I don't know whether
>>that was actually your plan or not, but watch out because there can be
>>many more elements in a document than would be reasonable to display in
>>a tree structure.
> 
> 
> For now, I only planned to add the <div> to the tree. Maybe the <p> is worth
> considering (most likely it's going to be a user option)...

Options are a great idea.

> I agree, that is, as far as the editing of text, not for the editing of the
> structure (<div>). I can't think of any good reason WHY someone needs to
> modify the structure-tags. By not allowing editing the structure then only
> via the tree, it's much easier to check if the text a user typed in is
> correct XML. Another problem avoided then is that large texts (like for
> example Matthew Henry, which is over 20MB in OSIS), slow down the system
> when all that text is loaded in a RichTextBox (my editing component,
> osisRichTextBox is derived from RichTextBox)...

Another issue you're going to run into is the limit of your DOM tree. 
You might look for ways of not loading the entire tree into memory, but 
loading sections at a time (<div>s at various levels selectable by the 
user).  I know that XMLSpy grinds to a near halt on some of my documents 
that approach 20-30mb and will completely choke on 50mb+ documents.

> As far as I know, the following references are working in Sword (I don't
> know if this is also true for OSIS documents?):
> - References to a bible-text (OT or NT)
> - References to a passage in a commentary (or at least to another passage in
> itself)

These are both essentially the OT/NT Bible reference case that I 
mentioned.  Sword conceives of Bibles and commentaries as virtually 
identical.

> I don't know if it's possible to create a reference to a lexicon? The
> possibility to create references to BDB and Thayers could be really useful
> in a commentary... Does Sword currently support this?

Not specifically.  There are mechanisms now included in OSIS 1.5 for 
creating and referencing data in a dictionary format.  There's also the 
lemma attribute of the <w> element, which can be used for these sorts of 
references, but this is inappropriate for commentaries.  A commentary 
would likely have a reference such as <reference 
osisRef="Strong.Lexicon:G1234">G1234</reference>.  On second thought, I 
don't think it is all that well defined by OSIS, so I'll check the 
documentation and if I don't find a good answer, put some thought into 
it and propose something to the OSIS core working group.

--Chris