[sword-devel] Programmatic assigning of sword numbers

[DM Smith]

On Sep 23, 2007, at 11:09 PM, jonathon wrote:

> DM Smith wrote:
>
>> If we had a mapping of which words and or phrases in a given  
>> language mapped to a Strong's number, then one could write a  
>> program that tagged best matches.
>
> That makes it sound far more easier than it is in practice.
>
>> Now I've taken enough language classes to know that the effort would
>> be imprecise. Proofreading would be necessary.
>
> I've been looking at English mappings.
> The same English word can have two or more Strong's numbers.
> The same Strong number can have half a dozen English words.

Yes these are some of the problems. Phrase mapping is yet another set  
of problems.

But for a given verse, we have a limited number of words for which  
the Strong's numbers can map. This reduces the ambiguity and in some  
cases might eliminate it.

The Strong's Lexicons sometimes list the possible mappings for a  
particular translation. If we have a translation that is fairly close  
to that, then we can use that as a  hint of a constrained mapping.

For example, we have the mapping for the KJV. We have many variants  
of the KJV at Sword without Strong's numbers. A comparison of the one  
to the other can yield the differences and applying an approximation  
mapping algorithm (bitap, for example) can produce good results.

See a real working example of this here:
http://neil.fraser.name/software/diff_match_patch/demo_patch.html

-- DM