[sword-devel] companion modules

[Chris Little]

Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> 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.

This sounds a bit like what we did with one of the virtual modules that 
has been proposed. The NOTES virtual module (which had a demo 
implementation in BibleCS for a while) would essentially act as a target 
frame for display of the notes in whatever the current Bible is.

It was designed essentially with the NET in mind, but worked with the 
notes in any Bible. It's basically my opinion that the NET Bible and 
Notes belong in a single document and a single module. This is less 
trivial than just making two modules and may not even be compatible with 
the sales model employed for this Bible, but that's how I believe the 
text is best encoded.

This makes giant commentaries like the NET Notes usable where they 
wouldn't be easy to read in the form of note popups, but also makes 
Bibles with modest notesets a bit easier to use since the full text is 
always visible (if the NOTES virtual module is selected). On the other 
hand, there was never any attempt to make the NOTES virtual module be 
auto-focused and it doesn't address fast/slow commentaries, but these 
could be addressed.

Anyway, just food for though.

--Chris