[sword-devel] OSIS looks daunting. Can I import from existing VPL format?

[Greg Hellings]

John,

I'll leave someone else to address the possible issues with e-Sword.
We are not e-Sword, nor affiliated with e-Sword nor do we wish to be.

On a different note - it sounds like the toughest part for you will be
the vast amount of automated work required to reformat each verse into
an OSIS verse container.  Adding in the copyright information,
wrapping each chapter or book into an OSIS container or dealing with
the headings can all be done manually for only a fraction of the time
that it would take to manually convert each line into a <v ...> tag in
OSIS.

Assuming your lines are formatted like this:
Gen.1.1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
Gen.1.2 And the earth was without form and void

you can use a simple sed script to convert the verses in the file to
OSIS-tagged with a replace rule like this:

s/\([^ ]+\) \(.*\)/<v osisID="\1">\2<\/v>/

That may not be exactly correct, but it should be close.  If the
format of your lines is different, try posting a couple of verses here
(provided it's within copyright to transmit a handful of verses, which
most Bibles allow).  Once you get the verse containers created, you
shouldn't have much trouble doing the additional edits and additions
by hand.

Obviously, you can automate the process even to the point of giving
proper chapter/book wrappers in OSIS, but that would require a tool
more powerful than sed and probably would only be worth your time if
you are going to do this with a multitude of documents.

--Greg

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 3:38 PM,  <johnduffy at cgcf.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've spent a good bit of time preparing the Bible in Irish (An Bíobla Naofa)
> for e-Sword.  Having recently seen the possibilities of making it available
> for other programs, I'm trying to make it available for other formats also
> (again, with publisher's permission).  Having looked into it, OSIS is the
> format of choice now moving forward.  However, the verse-per-line format
> that I have would require a lot of work to make it OSIS compatible.  The
> issues are that it is not the normal versification (a variation of Vulgate,
> I think); and the paragraph information would be best added (which was lost
> in making it VPL, due to my initial lack of knowledge of such matters).
>
> However, as I look into the complexities of making a file in OSIS, the sheer
> amount of work required seems to make it beyond what I can achieve in a
> reasonable amount of time (despite more time being available to me just
> recently).  I spent an awful lot of work converting the Bible from MS Word
> format to VPL, and I'm not comfortable with the thought of the amount of
> time it would take to produce a module in OSIS format, esp. with so much
> hand coding.
>
> I'm now considering the option of converting the existing VPL format into
> Sword format straight, and later on trying to get a better version in OSIS.
> Either I or someone else could do this at a more reasonable pace, if a Sword
> module is available in the meantime.  (The alternate versification is
> hard-coded into the VPL file at present and is very clear.  It uses the
> KJV+Apocrypha versification.  The VPL version also has headings for the
> Bible passages.  These are all uniquely marked up in the rtf format file
> from other markups e.g. alt. versification.)
>
> I have all the meta-data required, including the copyright and
> format-shifting permissions etc, for new modules.  I also have a commentary
> module which has the publisher's book introductions as well as headings
> (although these could be removed if requires, as they are already in the
> Bible file).  I have a dictionary/concordance file too, but I imagine that a
> new one would need to be made for Sword format.
>
> Can anyone advise on how to take either an e-Sword module, or the VPL text
> file, and convert it into Sword format?  Better still, would I be pushing my
> luck to ask if anyone would be able to volunteer to convert the file(s) for
> me?
>
> I appreciate all the help I can get on this.  Thanks
>
> John Duffy
>
>
>
>
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