[sword-devel] OSIS milestones and the attribute n ?

[Chris Little]

On 11/12/2011 6:44 AM, David Haslam wrote:
> Hi DM,
>
> You wrote: (numbers are mine)
>
> 1. Not really, but effectively. The verse begin and end tags, regular and
> milestoned, with all of its attributes are thrown away. The purpose of the n
> attribute is to provide what the verse number should be.
>
> 2. Do you see a value in osis2mod reading/using the value? I'm not sure how
> osis2mod might use it to better build a module.
>
> My detailed response:
>
> 1. Precisely!  Our front-end applications do not display verse range tags.
> Is this because (a) the n attribute has been effectively discarded during
> module build, and/or (b) because currently the SWORD engine does not provide
> a means to supply these to the front-end?
>
> 2. Whereas we might have engineered verse range tags from the original
> sID/eID attributes (if present&  correct), the fact is that these are
> transformed by osis2mod to genX, where X is an integer. This makes such
> reverse engineering for existing modules impossible.
>
> If we wish to represent printed Bibles as faithfully and as accurately as we
> can, then verse range tags should be something supported by the SWORD API
> and the JSword API.  Otherwise, when one or more verse number has been
> omitted, how is the reader supposed to know whether (a) it's a case of
> linked verse text for a verse range, or (b) whether the verse is one of
> those commonly omitted in many modern translations, or (c) whether the
> source text was deficient by having accidental omissions?
>
> For (b) refer to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bible_verses_not_included_in_modern_translations
>
> In essence, I see an opportunity for a significant software improvement
> here.

This essentially requires including the verse elements in the data of 
the Sword module. It's a trivial change that permits later access to the 
verse element's attributes (including n) and has zero effect on 
frontends that don't understand how to interpret the verse element (or 
don't want to).

We've included the verse element in the past (maybe 7-8 years ago). Troy 
and some of the BibleTime team objected, for reasons they'll have to 
explain, since they're not based in any kind of rationality that I will 
ever comprehend. Somehow they believe that less information is better 
than more. And so the verse elements were removed.

--Chris