[sword-devel] Poetry and indented lines

[Greg Hellings]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 1:55 AM, Daniel Owens <dhowens at pmbx.net> wrote:
> Yes, I considered that means of markup, but it didn't produce the result I
> was looking for in the front-ends I was targeting, which is why I went for
> the level="4" attribute. This is one of the tensions with XML--function is
> favored over form, leaving the form up to the engine's filters or front-end
> filters rather than the module developer.

There already is a well-defined mechanism to do exactly this outside
of the realm of OSIS or SWORD and general to all XML.  I have
repeatedly advocated the use of external CSS files and a standard way
of linking them into a module -- either adding a line to the .conf to
indicate their location or some other way so that the HTML generated
by a front-end can be tied to the CSS file, or the OSIS could be
directly displayed and then front-ends would not be forced to render
HTML but could directly display the OSIS files.

Of course, a regular way of linking the OSIS elements to a CSS class
or element ID would need to be agreed upon -- perhaps make the CSS
class equal to the source element name or some other similar thing
(such as name + valueof(level) for the <l> element in this particular
discussion).  For example, if the <l> gets transformed into an HTML
<li> element, and you had <l level="4">Some Text</l> then perhaps the
generated HTML could be <li class="l-4">Some Text</li> and then the
module creator could specify .l-4 {float: right} or whatever they
wanted in their CSS and that could be linked into the display for
those front-ends that support external CSS and HTML displays.

Since there are some times when, perhaps, the right-justify may not
work well (small screens, whatever), then there could even be multiple
CSS files specified if the module creator desired, so that they could
control both the content and display of their module without
sacrificing either the semantic power of OSIS or the descriptive power
of CSS to display their modules the way they desire.

--Greg

>
> This is probably opening a low-priority can of worms, but what if some
> controls on the form a module is displayed in were encoded in the conf file?
> I mean, you could define how certain attributes should be displayed to give
> module developers more control over how their modules display. Otherwise the
> filters have to come up with a standard implementation that may or may not
> match the publisher's intention. Just a thought. I realize that may be
> creating more work than it's worth, but it might solve the tension that
> currently exists between form and function. Ideally "selah" should be tagged
> as the standard suggests, but if that means sacrificing form as a module
> developer I am reluctant to do that. If I can achieve form without
> sacrificing the essential function, I'll do it. If the module developer
> didn't have to make that sacrifice and could produce good OSIS markup, that
> would be my ideal.
>
> Daniel
>
> Chris Little wrote:
>
> Daniel Owens wrote:
>
> One more thing to consider is poetic elements that are right-justified. One
> of the translations I have worked on preparing for SWORD had "Selah" right
> justified (VietNVB, in case you're interested). I just encoded it like so:
>
> <l level="4">Sê-la.</l>
>
> It isn't right-justified, but I think level 3 was the highest indented line
> I found. There should be a standard way of right-justifying, though.
>
> Daniel
>
> It's not a general purpose right-justify directive, but OSIS does have a
> specific line type for Selah (and Selah-derived) lines:
>
> <l type="selah">Selah</l>
>
> --Chris
>
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