[sword-devel] Osis2mod, was:1.5.8 bugs

[krzbia at ctm.gdynia.pl]

> "Krzysztof Bialas" <krzbia w ctm.gdynia.pl> wrote on Sun, 20 Mar 2005 
> 15:01:02 +0100:
>
>> I've invested quite some time into developing an example osis file
>> showing off the problems with osis2mod/Sword for windows 1.5.8pre3
>> that are (in my opinion) 1.5.8 blockers. These are stated in the
>> forum message
>> http://www.crosswire.org/forums/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=274.
>
> I have converted another Bible to OSIS 2.0.1 format, and xml2gbs
> (1.5.7 Linux) crashes half-way through. If I take only parts of the
> Bible, it completes, but all verses are empty.
>
> After running it in the debugger and looking at the source, it seems
> that the problem is due to unhandled elements or unanticipated ways of
> nesting elements.
>
> At this point I stopped investigating because I don't think there's
> any hope of ever parsing OSIS XML correctly using an ad-hoc parser;
> OSIS is way too complex and very flexible. A clean solution would
> require that xml2gbs be rewritten to employ an external XML library
> (e.g., libxml2 from http://xmlsoft.org/).
>
> It is not up to me to judge whether this blocks 1.5.8.
>
> Justus
>
> -- 
> Justus H. Piater, Ph.D.         http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~piater/
> Institut Montefiore, B28        Phone: +32-4-366-2279
> Université de Liège, Belgium    Fax:   +32-4-366-2620

I was also a bit suprised to see hand-made OSIS parser. I understand that it 
is there becouse of 'historical reasons' and surely it will be replaced by 
something more decent (xml2, xerces, ...) in future when someone will find 
time to do it. Looking at BibleTime makes me optimistic as this application 
already follows the clean solution - and (in my personal opinion) should 
also read plain OSIS Bible xml modules, not only those transformed by 
osis2mod. But that was just a side note, as I'm not a Sword developer, but a 
Sword module developer. So from my perspective, it does not matter whether 
it is done the clean way or the rough way as soon it does the job correctly 
and in my opinion other tasks as alternative versification systems and 
apocrypha support is more needed then the 'niceness' of parser. My job is to 
prepare Bible module as close to the original as possible - including all 
the formatting peculiarities the printed text posseses. I believe it is also 
the developers aim to have quality modules available, and I'm ready to help 
them to test the Sword so it would support broader range of OSIS texts.


Greetings
Christopher