[sword-devel] New Modules (front-end developers: please read)

[Chris Little]

> I think maintaining OSIS markup is good. But I also see some problems here.

To be clear, my real intent was to store content more accurately & 
completely than we had been.  Everything else is just a side effect of 
doing things the right way.

> It's already hard to maintain own filters to make sure it looks right in all 
> modules we have in the download section. If we add another subtype of module 
> markup (OSIS + verse tags) all frontends need to keep that working that, too.
> To get alternate versification we should do it with the stuff Daniel is 
> preparing and not using another hack to enable alternate versification. 
> Versification belongs into the SWModule derived classes and not into the 
> render filters.

Daniel's work is unquestionably the foundation of the correct way of 
storing data and handling alternative versification systems, when it 
becomes available.  However, I have to state that there are very simply 
too many advantages to maintaining the verse tag in markup, and using 
it.  Rendering alternate versification verse numbers that have been 
conformed to the KJV versification is an immediately useful example, but 
one that will eventually be replaced by Daniel's work.  However, 
providing a cue as to where to place verse numbers when a title is 
stored in the same verse is another.  Another use is for rendering 
sub-verses (something OSIS specifically provides a mechanism for, but 
that cannot be expressed within Sword currently).  And another use is 
non-numeric verse numbers.  One example is Greek Esther, whose chapters 
can be enumerated as the letters A-F in some systems, and another is the 
prologue to Sirach, simply titled "Prologue" rather than chapter 0 or 
chapter 1, verse 0.

> IMHO the best would be to be standards compliant with the (even internal) 
> module markup and supporting only one solution for versification. There are 
> some many hacks in Sword which are not documented and which frontend 
> developers have to know.

If you don't desire anything more complex than:
13 KJV canonical verse [14 KJV non-canonical verse]
then you can simply copy the code from the OSISplain filter that I'll 
commit sometime in the next couple of days, and you'll end up with what 
you would have had if I had run the documents through a vpl2mod-style 
importer.

--Chris