[sword-devel] OSIS feature support and questions

[Matthew Talbert]

> It "seems" straightforward.
> Does it handle "self"? (Which will be in dictionaries.)

Doesn't appear to.

> Does it handle Bible.KJV:reference or Bible.ref-system.work:reference? (I.e.
> where the workID is not merely the name of the module but contains other
> info?) At least it should then split on '.' and take the last part.

Looks like it does something with things like Bible.Vulgate, etc, but
it doesn't look very sophisticated.

> Does it handle all valid osisRefs? E.g.
> osisRef="ESV:Matt.1.1-Matt.2.3,Gen.1.1" (discontiguous range)

Yes and no. It appears it will get output as
sword://Matt.1.-1-Matt.2.3,Gen.1.1 which will then get interpreted by
the frontend. In the case of Xiphos, we'd just hand this back to SWORD
to parse. I don't know if you would always get expected results here.

> I remember that. And since I'm not much of a SWORD programmer, I didn't say
> much.
>
> My point: By having a workable mechanism in the engine that is updated as
> needed to handle more and more of the osisRef spec, more front-ends can
> share the fruits of labor.
>
> Troy and Chris stated, in those email threads, it is essentially a front-end
> issue. I won't argue that. But it is one that has to be solved by each
> front-end. It would be nice for the solution to be done once and shared.

I don't disagree. I just wanted to point out that basic support
already exists (it would be trivial for BT to provide the same level
of support that Xiphos already has). If people start using it, perhaps
there will be more pressure to make it better. If no one actually
needs or uses the more advanced concepts, then it will be unnecessary
to add more functionality.

Matthew