[sword-devel] Adding abbreviated names to the module conf file (was Re: isalnum(3) for i18n)

[Chris Little]

Daniel Owens wrote:
> - The default should not necessarily be English. This is what Chris is 
> suggesting. The default display ought to be in the language that the 
> module developer decides (usually the language of that module, except in 
> the case of ancient texts, in which case probably English should be the 
> default).

My recommendation was actually that the default be the language of the 
module (what I have referred to, perhaps somewhat confusingly, as the 
localized name). In the absence of that, I recommended using the 
English. For old (all existing) content, the fallback would be the 
current combination of localized plus English that is found in most modules.

For ancient languages, I would recommend simply using the "English" (or 
more generally Latin/Latin-script) form.

  > One further item I would like to propose is an Author field. This is 
not
> so important for Bibles (and maybe for most dictionaries), but for most 
> books the author is a major factor in whether one uses it or not (way 
> more important than title). It could be argued that the author ought to 
> be in the Description or About, but if front-ends in the future want to 
> enable users to sort the books in their library by author, title, 
> subject, etc., then there needs to be a field for that. It also 
> facilitates bibliographic citation for students and scholars. The more 
> books are added, the more important this becomes. And it also ought to 
> be localizable (I'm thinking especially of Chinese authors). A Publisher 
> field could be useful too, but that usually is given in the About field, 
> so I wouldn't push for it as long as the full bibliographic information 
> is there somewhere.

I think an Author field is a great idea. We'll probably also want a 
Translator field. I believe Publisher /might/ be covered by one of the 
Copyright lines, but I can't check the .conf standard in the Wiki ATM.

I don't think this needs to be localizable. Rather we should just keep 
names in a standard form. There are cases where an author's name is 
different in different languages, but they are relatively few. More 
significant are the case where an author's name is transliterated. We 
could do "Author" and "LatnAuthor" fields for the native script form and 
Latin transliterated form respectively, but it might be just as sensible 
to put the Latin transliteration in parentheses following its native 
script form.

I think we should also keep things in standard sorting order of family 
name followed by given name.

So, by way of example, considering first a Latin-script name, then a 
non-Latin-script name:

Author=Luther, Martin

Author=倪柝聲 (Nee, Watchman)

OR

Author=倪柝聲
LatnAuthor=Nee, Watchman

For multiple authors, we can simply use commas and 'and' (or its 
module-locale appropriate translation).

--Chris