[sword-devel] Explaine ThML markup

[Chris Little]

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Victor Zhuromsky wrote:

> Tanks for explanations, but it is really discauraging that I don't have 
> such freedom with Sword engine as I would do with amy HTML browser or 
> original ThML interpreter, because I use completely different fonts for 
> both Greek and Hebrew, that are not to be encoded to UTF-8. The fonts 
> are taken from Bible Works project and are bwgrkl.ttf and bwhebb.ttf. If 
> I don't apply these fonts, all the greek and hebrew words would be 
> without accents, etc.

These are copyrighted fonts that may not be distributed with our text, so 
they are inappropriate for a Sword module.  Furthermore, they are not 
Unicode fonts, so they make it difficult to support other platforms or 
searching in a unified manner.  Even Bibleworks is moving to Unicode for 
their next release.  There is no issue with displaying accents in Unicode, 
you simply need to convert the encoding correctly.  There are a few 
converters specifically for Bibleworks fonts that you can find on the web.
 
> Anyway, I will try making the module in ThML because it is free, but 
> OSIS is a commercial language and is not good for use in GNU project. 
> That is my opinion.

OSIS is NOT a "commercial language" and I don't have any idea where you 
got that impression.  OSIS is an open standard developed by the ABS, the 
SBL, CrossWire and many others (including people from CCEL).  It is being 
developed in the open.  ThML, on the other hand, is controlled exclusively 
by CCEL (not that this is a reason to not use it).  OSIS is CLEARLY more 
in line with the goals of a GNU project than any other standard for 
marking up Bibles & Bible-related texts.

If you insist on using ThML, you may, but ALL modules WILL be converted to 
OSIS at some time in the future.

> One more question. How should i mark my Strong's numbers that they are 
> targets in my lexicon, for other bible texts to point to it?

make an IMP file of the following format:

$$$G1
<def>....</def>
$$$G2
<def>....</def>

etc.


G for Greek, H for Hebrew.

They will somewhat confuse the current version of Sword, but in the next 
release, we will be moving to Strong's numbers preceded by a G or H in 
order to remove confusion and come into line with standard practices.

The IMP file itself does not need to be valid ThML, just the parts that 
follow a line beginning with "$$$".

--Chris