[sword-devel] Module Display Names

[Greg Hellings]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Karl Kleinpaste <karl at kleinpaste.org> wrote:
> Greg Hellings <greg.hellings at gmail.com> writes:
>> Description is overkill and probably not fit for display in a module
>> selection widget - a description for the module would go something
>> like:
>> "Dr. Doe's classic commentary on the book of Galatians from 1977.
>> Widely praised for its scholarliness and ecumenical appeal, Dr. Doe's
>> classic continues to have 21st century appeal..."
>
> That's not what Description is for.  That's what About is for.

Ah, I guess I assumed Description to be longer than single phrase.
Strange, I should have realized the delinieation because I just
encoded both of those fields into a database schema yesterday and
differentiated between Description as a VARCHAR(128) field and About
as a Text/CLOB field.

>
> There are a couple of modules whose Description is overkill, like
> bible.org's native NET, whose description is:
>
> "New English Translation with over 60,000 translator, study and text critical notes"
>
> Currently, the worst offender for length is HunUj:
>
> "The New Translation Bible of the Hungarian Bible Society (Magyar Bibliatarsulat Ujforditasu Bibliaja)"
>
> Anyhow, Description is supposed to be for a short descriptive phrase,
> not a whole commentary on the nature of the work.  Again, that's About.
>
> But nonetheless these Description fields' contents are used routinely in
> selection widgets.  In Xiphos, do a context menu File -> Open Module.
> What you see is Description content.
>
> Is this too much?

In my opinion, with the extremely stringent limitations on the value
of the (valid) name of a work, that is too hidden for my personal
tastes.  One of my modules is [CONNOT] which is a decent abbreviation
and it fits in the limits of SWORD.  Currently I have the About field
set to"Consultant Notes" and the About field set to "<p>Consultant
Notes for Translators.</p>".  The wiki Defines Description as:
<string>
This is a short (1 line) title of the module.

In my mind, that makes it preferable to display the Description in the
selection widget over "CONNOT" which is the module's "name".  At
present Xiphos displays "CONNOT" in the module selection widget,
"Consultant Notes" at the top of the About dialog and "Consultant
Notes for Translators" in the body of that dialog.  BibleTime does not
display the Description field anywhere that I can see but otherwise
agrees with Xiphos' pattern of CONNOT in the widget and "Consultant
Notes for Translators" in the about dialog.

When I think of my "Bookshelf" as BibleTime calls it or "Modules" as
Xiphos says, I think of my physical bookshelf where I want to see the
titles of the work and not just their abbreviations or internal
representations.  This is represented in "Description" (answering my
own initial question of if we have a field already to define it - even
if it confused me when I was thinking along the lines of Title) within
the .conf file.  Perhaps you can shed some light on why you use the
value of the name instead of the Description in your widget?

--Greg

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