[sword-devel] Tagging and Categorisation of modules

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:17 AM, Chris Little <chrislit at crosswire.org> wrote:
> The categorization system is primarily concerned with presentation within a
> frontend. E.g. a GenBook with category Bible would be treated/displayed as a
> Bible (not that we've implemented this in .confs yet), an LD module with
> type DailyDevotional would display mm.dd keys using localized date formats,
> etc.

I don't think that one distinct module type handles all needs.  Look
for example at Bible Reading Planners vs. Daily Devotionals.  It makes
sense to say "a Bible reading planner is a Daily Devotional", and
should be shown with a date, etc.  It also makes sense to display it
to the user as a reading planner, not a daily devotional, since that
is what they are looking for.  A reading planner also has things
people want to do with it that are different from what you might want
for a typical daily devotional (which presumably you just read).  For
example, we recently had a feature request for BPBible to allow
checking off of a reading planner as you read through it in a year, a
thing that doesn't seem likely for a "standard" daily devotional.

How frontends display it is up to them, but I believe that in many
cases the more information the better, and I don't think you can
always fit a module into one rigid category with absolute certainty.

> It seems like what you're talking about is subject specification, which we
> deal with via the LCSH field (which is repeatable, though we've never done
> so). I'm amenable to adding a CCELSH field (also repeatable) as well, for
> CCEL subjects, since they are more focused on Christian literature.
>
> A lot of our material can also be found at CCEL or directly derives from
> their material, so copying such entries over would be a bit of work but not
> require much editorial insight. The LCSH values are, as ever, available via
> the Library of Congress catalog website, catalog.loc.gov.

I want to be able to specify arbitrary information about the module
that suits me (not some kind of standardised thing that I would have
to try and find for myself - can anyone tell I don't like standards?),
including types of information that I think important but for whatever
reason are not included in the conf file.  Things like I suggested for
the "Early Fathers" collection, and could suggest similarly for the
multi-volume commentary sets you get, like the Cambridge Bible and the
Speaker's Commentary.  There is no doubt (in my mind, anyway) that
such a tag makes sense, and there is equally no doubt that it is
unlikely to be a standardised subject heading.

I also think it is important for exploration of the library to allow
finding of related works as I suggested, and this could be done much
more easily if there are more associated tags.

Jon