[sword-devel] Perseus Project

[Chris Little]

Sword actually has a HREFCom driver that uses a similar concept.  The 
idea is that the Sword module entry contains an URL that points to a 
page with real the real information.  The old version of JFB used this 
mechanism, pointing to the CCEL version of JFB.  At one point, this 
caused some problems because the URL for the pages at CCEL changed, 
however it was reasonably easy to fix with just a new .conf file, 
because the .conf contained a string to be prefixed to the URL in the 
entry.  For example, CCEL went from http://ccel.wheaton.edu/ to 
http://www.ccel.org/ while the page locations within those domains 
remained the same, so only the domain name part of the address needed to 
be changed.  The other problem was that users inevitably and incessantly 
whined because they wanted to have everything local and (in the case of 
BibleCS) the interface really sucked, since the implementation launched 
a separate window.

That said, there's no reason why we couldn't add HREF varieties of the 
LD and GenBook drivers also to handle linking content on e.g. Perseus.  
The only real difficulty is in enumerating all of the possible entry 
values, since every entry on the server needs an entry in the module.

A further extraction that we could attempt would be a way sending blind 
queries to the web server, without knowing the actual enumeration of 
entries on the server.  This would be pretty trivial, since it only 
requires knowing a base URL on the server and a pattern for performing 
lookups.

I don't know much about the particulars of the syntax and format used at 
Perseus, but if you think entries could be enumerated, we should have 
little difficulty creating modules for Persues.  Now... creating 
sensible UIs for these will be another matter.

--Chris

Keith Ralston wrote:

>Unfortunately, I am not adept enough with C/C++ for such an undertaking.  I
>can handle the macro language in Libronix.
>
>That not withstanding, the web interface might be a good place to try to get
>something going.  When I hear back from Perseus, I'll look into that project
>and see if I can get any traction.
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org
>>[mailto:sword-devel-admin@crosswire.org]On Behalf Of Martin Gruner
>>Sent: Wed, November 12, 2003 2:41 PM
>>To: sword-devel@crosswire.org
>>Subject: Re: [sword-devel] Perseus Project
>>
>>
>>Well, if you come up with something similar for Sword, I don't
>>think anybody
>>would object it. =) I have a flatrate connection.....
>>
>>Martin
>>
>>Am Mittwoch, 12. November 2003 21:26 schrieb Keith Ralston:
>>    
>>
>>>I think integration would have to assume some connectivity to
>>>      
>>>
>>the internet.
>>    
>>
>>>Many applications now have this type of functionality.  The
>>>      
>>>
>>"stand alone"
>>    
>>
>>>UIs could launch a browser with the URL or they could integrate the
>>>returned HTML in their own windows.  This would allow them to
>>>      
>>>
>>utilize the
>>    
>>
>>>functionality without the issues you have listed below.
>>>
>>>I do most of my work from a laptop.  Therefore I am
>>>      
>>>
>>occasionally connected.
>>    
>>
>>>I would like to have this capability for when I do have web access.  If
>>>their URL structure is not too difficult, I'll probably write a
>>>      
>>>
>>macro for
>>    
>>
>>>Libronix to allow me to do the same thing in their software.
>>>      
>>>