[sword-devel] Alternate Versification

[Jonathan Marsden]

Jonathan Morgan wrote:

> I think that the versification should be shown as part of the module
> information (after all, it is part of the module configuration), and
> possibly it should have a more presentable name or more information
> about a versification.  If so, this should also be available from the
> API in some form, and it seems to me that it would be useful to have
> similar things in osis2mod, so that you don't just get:

> Available versifications:
> KJV
> Leningrad
> Luther

OK.  Are you proposing a new .conf file field, something like:

VersificationDescription=A sentence or two about this versification ...

which would mean that every module could include this description info,
and that different modules with the same versification could have
differing VersificationDescription text?  This is a simple change, but
is not ideal because of the duplication that results, and the ensuing
difficulty in obtaining a single description per versification system
from the set of installed .conf files.

Or, are you suggesting in effect some sort of "Versification Information
Database" which is more central to the SWORD library setup, that has one
(optional) description per versification system, and to which this
information would be added at the time versifications are registered?

The latter approach seems more logical to me, but needs more work and
probably requires a (minor) API change to allow an extra optional
parameter to the registerVersificationSystem() method, as well as a way
to get this info back out again, perhaps a listVersificationSystems()
method.  Presumably these strings would be internationalized, so you get
a locale-appropriate result.

Could each versification system also have a URL associated with it that
points to a web page describing it in more detail??  Or is that overkill
-- would it be better to make that "very" optional, by including any
such URLs in the VersificationDescription string concerned?

This kind of API definition and enhancement is IMO something that should
probably have happened a while ago, early in the av11n design stage,
well before 1.6.0RC* releases started to emerge :)  I've not seen the
av11n design documentation, so I have no idea if something like this was
considered earlier and has already rejected.

The window of opportunity for SWORD 1.6.0 API changes is probably
already closed.  So realistically, I'd think this should wait for 1.6.1.
 For 1.6.0, adding a few fprintf()s to osis2mod is (IMO again) probably
sufficient?

Could someone please propose the one-or-two-sentence descriptions of
each versification system?  That would be a helpful step forward with
this, I think.

Jonathan