[sword-devel] supported ranges for bibles/commentaries

[DM Smith]

Chris Little wrote:

> How, precisely, do you think that would work?

I don't see a need to re-invent the wheel. It would satisfy the scope 
element of OSIS.

>
> Gen-Rev works fine for specifying the whole Bible. (But even for that, 
> does it imply inclusion of deuterocanonicals or not?)

We would either look to OSIS for guidance or involvement in our defining 
the practical issues.

Ranges have to be understood in terms of the versification system being 
used.
Without a statement of which to use, the default would be Sword's 
default/current versification.

>
> If you specify "Gen", do you mean every single verse of it? What if 
> one verse is omitted? How is that to be identified?

I don't see that OSIS has adressed the question of exclusions well. 
Obviously, ranges can be made precise.
But to understand a range of Gen.1-3.23, Gen.4-Rev.22.21 would take 
effort. What verses are between Gen 3.23 and Gen 4?
Having the following:
<scope osisRef="Gen-Rev"/>
<scope type="exclusion" osisRef="Gen.3.24"/>
would be better.
And a statement of just <scope type="exclusion" osisRef="Gen.3.24"/> 
should suffice.
The absence of a positive scope statement can be understood as the whole 
work.

Once we have an agreement on what the scope should be, we can write a 
simple program that will read the index to create it.
This can be used to maintain the scope statement as well, as the module 
changes.

I am of the opinion that the statement in the conf does not need to be 
exact. It probably should be accurate to a chapter level.

>
> Are introductions somehow to be noted? How will discontinuous segments 
> be enumerated?

I think that it might be good to have a feature entry in the conf for 
intros. And if we go the way of scoping a work's intros, then it would 
have a separate scope.

>
> Why put this in the .conf file rather than reading it directly from 
> the index? The index would be precise & complete, albeit slower.

The index is not available prior to download. The first use I see in 
this is to make the installer smarter. It can clearly indicate to the 
user that the Bible is NT only, OT only, has Deut. (when we get there), 
or that a commentary pertains to the Torah, Gospels, Romans, ...) [ 
Perhaps some ranges have friendly names like Gospels]

The second use I see in this is within the program to let the user know 
the scope of the work. Yes this could be gotten from the index, but the 
issues that you pointed out regarding missing 
items/books/chapters/verses would need to be interpreted correctly. Is 
the item missing (present in the original) or just not present (not 
present in the original)?
(It is disconcerting to open a Bible for a given chapter and see 
nothing. The program can give advance info so that the user can know 
that it is pointless to try. Having a declaration after doing a lookup 
is not very user friendly)

For commentaries, it would be very helpful to know the scope of what 
they refer. This would help streamline presenting an application's 
lookup interface on Commentaries.

For dictionaries, (like strongs, robinson) that are tied to NT or OT, it 
would be helpful to know that. There is nothing in the work that could 
help with that.

The point that it is slower to read the index, should be indicative of 
an opportunity. By caching the results in a scope statement in the conf, 
a program does not need to do it. (Unless it needs a more precise 
statement, depending upon the accuracy with which we represent the scope)

>
> Aside from details of implementation, not a bad idea. I had thought 
> BibleTime already did something like this on-the-fly.

And finally, on the question of implementation, what if we were to split 
the conf into two files. One would be an OSIS document containing just 
the preamble. This would contain nearly everything in the conf that is 
not a piece of control data. The conf would contain just the control data.

>
> --Chris
>
> Daniel Glassey wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> Another idea after thinking about commentaries. It's a pain coming to
>> a commentary and having to get the frontend to get to the right part
>> of the bible to look at it. It would be good to be able to specify in
>> the conf file what range of scripture a 'bible' or 'commentary'
>> supports
>>
>> e.g. for when:
>> only portions of scripture have been translated so far, or only
>> portions are made available for sword
>> only the new testament has been translated
>> the commentary is for one book, or a small group of books.
>>
>> Ideally the frontends would only present the user with the ability to
>> select verses that are good with that particular text.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Daniel
>