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

[Chris Little]

[Sorry, I sent this earlier, but from the wrong address, so it didn't 
get through, and may show up again if Troy lets it through the queue.]

Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Chris Little <chrislit at crosswire.org> writes:
>> And what's worse, there exists a standard reference system for
>> Josephus, that we would probably want to use for linking to it...
>> Ultimately, you would want to encode a link to the above reference as
>> <reference osisRef="Josephus:Ant.1.8.2">some text</reference>.
>> Linking with that would require remaking the module with keys like
>> /Ant/1/8/2.
> 
> mod2imp Josephus |
> sed -e '/\$\$\$/s;/Book ;/;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/Chapter ;/;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/Section ;/;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/The Life of Flavius Josephus;/Life;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/The Antiquities of the Jews;/Ant;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/Against Apion;/Ag.Ap.;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/The War of the Jews;/War;' \
>     -e '/\$\$\$/s;/An Extract out of Josephus'"'"'s Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades;/Hades;' \
>     > josephus.imp
> imp2gbs josephus.imp
> 
> Embellish to taste, update .conf, and re-issue the module.
> 
> Problem solved.  Delta-T: 10 minutes.

Except that I'd like to update the text to a richer version as well.

>> And, again, the above syntax would not work within an osisRef attribute.
> 
> All you do is to convince me, again and again, not to generate OSIS.
> 
> I absolutely do not care if it wouldn't pass muster "within an osisRef
> attribute."  It passes muster NOW in ThML TODAY, because what I generate
> gets USED by people who wanted it YESTERDAY.
> 
> ThML, to me, is about Getting Stuff Done, and using tools that
> facilitate Getting Stuff Done, as opposed to wanking over whether I've
> accommodated the Syntax Purity Demigods.

Like it or not, OSIS & TEI are the future for us. ThML has value 
primarily as a way of incorporating materials from CCEL--the same way 
TEI has value as a way of incorporating materials from Perseus and others.

ThML has a significant downside, however, in that people assume it's 
just HTML with the first two letters metathesized and a few extra 
elements, as opposed to an application of XML, with all of the rules 
inherent to XML. And hardly anyone ever bothers to validate their ThML 
(CCEL aside of course) so they don't even see how far their work is from 
actual ThML.

You're not actually talking about using the Sword model of module markup 
formats (OSIS, TEI, ThML, GBF) that get transformed into render formats 
(HTML, RTF). What you want is to render the internal module markup--and 
that's fine if you're working on e-Sword or MyBible (the trademark 
infringing one) or one of the HTML Bible programs.

And it would be fine to suggest finding a solution that works today, no 
matter how ugly the markup, no matter how wrong-headed the encoding 
model, if we assumed that Sword 1.5.11 were the final version of Sword 
ever. But it's not, so we can take time to make sound decisions about 
encoding models and their interpretation within Sword. That way, rather 
than releasing content that achieves an end via one means and that works 
in one frontend today, then updating the module repeatedly until we 
finally find a good markup standard, we can get things right the first 
time and we csn do things in a consistent manner, guided by industry 
standards rather than ad hoc implementations.

--Chris