[sword-devel] companion modules

[Karl Kleinpaste]

The phrase "companion modules" was coined last January at BibleTech when
several of us were debating additional capabilities in which Wycliffe
folks have an interest.

This past Friday, I implemented a beginning of this concept in
GnomeSword.  The idea is that some modules come as a pair.  The best
example at hand is NET Bible's NETtext with their NETnotes.  Generally
speaking, if you open one of these, you also want the other, since the
footnote indicators in NETtext reference content in NETnotes.

I'm using my own builds of these modules, but the concept is applicable
to any pair: With "Companion=NETnote" in the Bible's .conf and the
opposite reference in the other, GnomeSword now notices these bits when
the user opens either.  It offers a dialog question as to whether the
user wants to open the other as well.  This will be part of the next
release of GS, probably later this month.

Importantly, this has no implication for the engine.  It's entirely an
application-level facility.

For Wycliffe specifically, it will need refinement because one thing
they were looking for is that they produce commentaries which contain
both per-verse discussion of content as well as more general discussion
surrounding a range of verses.  It was suggested that they separate
these into what was called the "fast" -vs- "slow" commentaries: The
per-verse part is the fast commentary, while the general discussion is
slow, not changing with every verse.  They would like to be able to
bring up both at once, one in GS' commentary pane and one as a separate
window.  Obviously, what I've just done isn't exactly that, but it was
simple (~30 lines) and it provides some initial understanding about the
idea.

I'd be interested in others' views on similar concepts, or how you think
this could be better supported.