[sword-devel] OSIS variants

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 5:18 AM, Daniel Owens <dhowens at pmbx.net> wrote:
> On 1/8/2010 11:22 AM, Matthew Talbert wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 11:32 PM, Daniel Owens<dhowens at pmbx.net>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Okay, I think I understand better. I think the main concern with keeping
>>> a
>>> variant as a toggled option is that it be searchable and able to be
>>> queried
>>> for lemma and morphology. As long as that can happen in a note, I'm happy
>>> with keeping it there. I think it makes sense that way, but I can see the
>>> other side of it. I think the engine should support both variants in
>>> notes
>>> and as an option to toggle.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure I understand all the issues involved here, but is it
>> really possible right now to do searching in footnotes for lemmas and
>> morphology? At the very least, it would definitely require changes in
>> Xiphos to accomplish this, no doubt adding to our already quite
>> confusing search interface. Right now, it seems that we can do
>> attribute search for either footnotes, strong's numbers, or
>> morphology; I believe (but could be wrong) that this directly maps to
>> the engine's functionality. I'm not sure how we would search in the
>> footnotes for morphology. (not to mention, that in a module like this,
>> you would probably want to search both the main text *and* the
>> footnotes at the same time; this would take 2 searches, wouldn't it?)
>>
>> It would seem keeping them in the main text would be better if these
>> concerns are correct.
>
> I don't think it is possible at this point, but the K/Q variants should be
> searchable, in my opinion. That's why it is a concern. I would think,
> though, that from a front-end perspective a simple option to include
> variants or footnotes could be added. After all, the notes are with the main
> text in the module. They are just displayed differently in the front-end,
> right? This could be revealing my ignorance, of course. If it is, then
> putting them in the main text makes sense.

There are two problems with searching.in variants and footnotes.  One
is actually indexing the data and using it in the search.  I don't
know if this is supported but it shouldn't be too hard.  The other is
displaying the match in an intelligible way in the list of search
results (preferably with the word(s) highlighted, etc.).  This is
likely to be frontend specific, since I'm sure different frontends
will display notes and variants differently.  If it is given as a
footnote or as an anchor with a tooltip attached then displaying it
will require a bit of thought.

When you are searching variants, it seems to me you are searching a
part of the text and so it makes sense.  Footnotes are a completely
different matter.  It makes sense to be able to search them, but they
are not really part of the text search.  For example, if I am
searching for words in the NET Bible, I want to find verses where
those words occur in the Bible text.  I don't necessarily want to find
verses where those words occur in the (extensive) notes.

Jon