[sword-devel] Taming Wild Threads (was: Getting stuff done (Re: External links))

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Quoting Chris Little <chrislit at crosswire.org>:
>
> It's not really a necessity that someone understand C++ well in order to
> write a quick list of supported tags, based on the filter code. If the
> code mentions 'lemma', presumably that indicates support for the lemma
> attribute on <w>. If it mentions 'lg' or 'l', presumably it's doing
> something to support those tags. And so forth.

For non-programmers even thinking that they should download some  
source code, find files there and read them can be too much. My point  
in an earlier post was (tried to be) that module makers should not be  
forced to look into source code. The modules should be encoded based  
on the needs of the module makers, not on the needs of programmers  
(though the module code should certainly be valid and well  
standardised!).

>
> I think the KJV module, which is posted, might be one of the best
> examples of OSIS usage. I'll post the MorphGNT and Tisch's 8th modules
> when I get around to converting them, since they will demonstrate some
> rather arcane and Sword-specific encoding practices that we intend to
> use for multiple lemmata per word.
>
> On the TEI front, I think I posted one of the Webster's dictionaries as
> an example (though it might no longer be best-practice encoding). And I
> do intend to post the new Strong's lexicons once I'm a little more happy
> with them. A multitude of nice, if not quite the correct format we're
> looking for, texts in TEI exist for download from Perseus. Their only
> problem is that they are TEI P4 whereas we are using a variant of TEI
> P5. So I'll probably post the new Josephus modules, based on Perseus'
> documents but collected and converted to P5.
>
> That should provide a nice collection of examples.
>

If only someone took example (possibly partly simplified or shortened)  
portions out of them which would fit in one wiki web page and would  
show all the tags used in those modules! As non-programmers should not  
be forced to read source code, I'm not enthusiastic about downloading  
huge documents and do script coding just to find out if there's some  
rarely used tag there which can't be found with quick reading. Even a  
list of tags and pointers to example entries would be enough, if the  
examples would be exhaustive. Downloading the documents is not too  
much if I know where to look after that.

That kind of documentation would make updating the filters an easy  
piece of cake.

I repeat one more time: I don't want anybody to read BibleTime source  
code to know how to create modules. I want to support any well-formed,  
valid module which uses even new tags and conventions, but I need  
clear and concise documentation for that.

--Eeli Kaikkonen