[sword-devel] Two new modules available

[Brian J. Dumont]

Now available at the Xiphos repo are two new modules: Kretzmann (a
commentary) and KretzmannMaps.  These come from the 4-Volume "Popular
Commentary" by Paul Kretzmann completed in 1921 through 1923.  The
source of the electronic text is the Kretzmann Project,
www.kretzmannproject.org

The commentary module includes more OSIS features than are currently
supported by SWORD software, in the hopes of being a catalyst to feature
addition. 

The primary feature is to make external, non-scriptural references into
links.  It includes links to a number of SWORD modules (references were
checked against print editions):

    * [Clarke] (Bible Commentary by Adam Clarke)
    * [Concord] (The Book of Concord - Genbook)
    * [Josephus] (The Works of Josephus - Genbook)
    * [LifeTimes] (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred
      Edersheim - Genbook)

I'd like to give an example of why we should support this type of
inter-book linking.  For the module "LifeTimes", the SWORD module is
organized by Book/Chapter.  The original print edition is organized by
Volume/Book/Chapter.  References to the book in "Kretzmann" are by
Volume/Page.  This means that if someone wants to follow the reference
given by Kretzmann using the SWORD module "LifeTimes", that he needs to
first go to a print edition in order to find what book and chapter
correspond to a specific volume/page.  I think that it is obvious that
that is downright silliness.

Later we could add links to modules on our "wish list":

    * Schaff Commentary
    * Keil/Delitzsch Commentary
    * Expositor's Greek Testament
    * "In the Days of Christ" by Alfred Edersheim
    * "The Temple" by Alfred Edersheim
    * ... and a bunch of others

The "elephant in the room" when one gets into this commentary are the
links to Luther's writings.  All Luther references are made to an
original-language collection of Luther's Works (German and Latin
mixture).  To date I'm told that about half of Luther's writings have
been translated into English and about half of that is in the public
domain.  I don't know either German or Latin, so I can't really set
these links to point to the module "LuthersWorks" without an enormous
amount of pain.

Other OSIS features in Kretzmann that I hope are one day supported:

    * better handling of OSIS <q> tags - these are in the OSIS file, but
      I strip them out before building the module in order to get proper
      right and left double quotes ... If <q> handling is improved, I'd
      love to see some sort of front-end support to assist the reader
      with long quotes.  Maybe the start and end of the quote is
      highlighted when the mouse is over the quote or something.  Maybe
      a baloon window showing the contents of the "who" attribute.
    * better <hi> support for things like smallcaps, subscripts, and
      superscripts
    * support for OSIS tables

I will very gladly make the original OSIS document available to anyone,
especially to developers who might be looking to add support for some of
these features :)

Enjoy,
Brian


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