[sword-devel] Creation of commentary using osis..

[Chris Little]

Pierre Marc Dumuid wrote:
> That matter aside:
> 
> I'm not sure but I'm getting the idea that sword doesn't store the 
> modules in it's own format. This seems REALLY strange, as it relies on 
> the client to provide the interpretation of the format and thus results 
> in differences between clients as has occured.  I initially thought that 
> OSIS was converted to a "SWORD" format, which had only one way of 
> representing reference, footnotes, etc.  (BTW: the footnotes don't work 
> either.)  But it seems that each format when converted to the "SWORD" 
> standard format (if one exists) maintains some of its specific 
> representation of data, (i.e. <reference> instead of <scripRef> ") which 
> to me seems REALLY bad...

Sword's data formats, including both methods of storing the data in the 
files and of indexing their contents, are proprietary formats.

The markup of the data, however, is preserved as much as possible. So 
OSIS modules contain OSIS markup, ThML modules contain ThML markup, etc. 
Conversion between markup formats can be done by the engine.

If we defined our own markup format, it would still have to be 
implemented independently by each front end, so there's no guarantee of 
similar appearance or behavior. If front end authors only want to deal 
with one format, they can just convert to OSIS first, as JSword does.

--Chris