[sword-devel] EarlyFathers Genbook and the ability to search genbooks

[DM Smith]

On Jun 8, 2008, at 9:46 PM, Daniel Owens wrote:

> That brings me to another issue: the ability to search genbooks and  
> commentaries. I have a vague memory of comments on this forum to the  
> effect that such a feature isn't necessary or desireable, but the  
> Father's module is a prime example of the kind of genbook that one  
> would want to be able to search. This isn't just useful for scholars  
> but for your average person who wants to know what different writers  
> have said about "holiness" or "creation" or "the Holy Spirit." I use  
> that feature all the time in several other Bible software programs  
> because it saves me time having to read through a lot of material to  
> find what I am looking for (and is also the reason why theological  
> libraries subscribe to ATLASerials and such). I don't know what kind  
> of load that puts on the engine (creating indexes and such), but it  
> seems to me it ought to be a basic part of the functionality of the  
> Sword front-ends. Not everyone would make use of such a feature but  
> many would, and apparently the engine supports it if BibleTime does.  
> It would just be nice to have a general search dialog that gave the  
> option to search in all genbooks and commentaries and maybe even  
> dictionaries.

Good idea. I think all modules should be searchable, both keys and  
text, either distinctly or in a unified manner.

For example, the key for a Bible is distinctly searchable, that is one  
can do a lookup of a verse. The key for a dictionary entry is also  
separately searchable, but will find the closest match. But for a  
GenBook, the key is also a title and thus is in some manner content  
and perhaps should be searchable as content.

I think that we should also allow for one to search for biblical  
references in a work. Bible Desktop uses xref: for this. For example,  
one can search xref:(Genesis 2.4) to find all the references to Gen  
2.4 in a work.

I think the SWORD engine allows for all modules to be indexed by  
cLucene. If so, it would be a matter of the individual applications  
making it visible.

Unfortunately, JSword and BD only allows for indexing Bibles and  
Commentaries, at this time.

In Him,
	DM