[sword-devel] Getting stuff done (Re: External links)

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Matthew Talbert <ransom1982 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What really needs to be done, is to finalize how we are going to use
>> osisRefs.
>> I'd like to see modules being able to contain some mapping from osis ids to
>> display names. I don't show the user Gen.2.2 in my application (or
>> /Gen/2/2), why should I show them Ant.1.8.2 or (/Ant/1/8/2)?
>
> While I agree that this should be done, what is a person supposed to
> use in the meantime? I am working on an enhanced Easton module (well,
> it's been put on hold due to the gnomesword stuff), and I want these
> features:
>
> 1. Cross-references. Any word mentioned (except for some short,
> trivial ones) should be linked to the appropriate entry. I am doing
> this wikipedia style where only the first mention is linked.

Agreed.

> 2. Greek/Hebrew references. There are lots of mentions of the original
> language words that I would like linked to the Greek/Hebrew
> dictionaries.

Agreed.

> 3. Scripture references. Of course, this is supposed to work with OSIS.

Yes.

> So currently I can use thml and sword:// style links and this works in
> gnomesword. If I use Osis cross-references, it won't work anywhere.
> And I have no idea how long it will be until there exists a sword
> version that will work (1 year, 2 years?)

That depends on who your audience is.  If you can guarantee that your
audience is primarily Gnomesword, that's fine.  Otherwise, I'm not
sure that any other sword application will support sword:// or support
it well.

> I would like to mention as well that the documentation for creating
> dictionaries is quite lacking. I would be glad to contribute to this,
> but it would be nice to get this issue sorted out first.
>
> To summarize, I'm not against OSIS, but the support isn't there for
> what I'd like to do. The easy solution for me is to use thml and know
> that at least one front-end will support it, and wait to generate OSIS
> when that support is finished.

The advantage of this, I suppose, is that your cross-references could
be converted to OSIS refs later.  The disadvantage would come if you
lose other information when encoding in OSIS, as Ben suggested.

I don't think a module could ever contain cross-references and be the
standard module unless it used reasonably well supported methods, and
sword:// isn't, AFAIK, and I don't really think it should be.  That
being the case, work is needed to support referencing properly, and
I'm not sure who is going to do it or when (but know I don't have time
to do it).

Jon