[sword-devel] URL's in Commentary

[Greg Hellings]

Mike,

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:27 PM, Mike Hart <just_mike_y at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The other day I had an idea to provide a "Bible Gateway" module which
> contains URL links to the current verse for each copyrighted version
> available on Bible Gateway.  While this doesn't exactly solve copyrighted
> texts displaying within the sword platform, it reduces the time required to
> do comparisons against the most popular English texts. (That is, if it
> works.)  If the links can be made to open in a regular browser, I'm fairly
> confident this is fair use. (It should be fair use even in a front end, but
> Bible Gateway is ensured their ad revenue in a browser, where a sword
> frontend may or may not handle all the bits required for ads properly.)

I have had similar thoughts.

>
> Is there sword markup language that supports Links out? Is there a front end
> that handles http URL's? Which ML is the preferred for WWW links (in
> commentaries)?

You can do raw HTML as the markup for anything and tell the engine
that it is ThML. ThML is a strict superset of XHTML. While there might
be a way to put HTTP links in OSIS, since you are actively trying to
leverage the HTML aspects of the display apps, you probably should
stick with ThML as your markup to save yourself grief.

Just beware the "But what about BibleCS?!?!" messages you might get. ;)

>
> I put together a test module with plain html, which I built with IMP2VS
> (win32).  When I open the module as a text, the links display inside of
> BibleTime 2.9b1 correctly, but clicking them causes the URL to take over the
> entire current pane within BT, instead of sending the URL to the system
> defined browser (what I expected to happen.)  BT renders html well, but the
> link took over all 3 collumns of a parallel display, forcing a verse change
> to repair the display.

This behavior is correct. Outside of plugins and extensions,
displaying in BT is not different than displaying in Safari or Chrome
when it comes to opening a web page. When Xiphos 3.1.5 is released the
same will be true in it (display in Xiphos <= 3.1.4 is no different
from opening a page in Firefox unless the user has compiled against
GTKHTML or is using the Windows build).

I had thought of giving BibleTime the power to understand BibleGateway
pages but to render them using an iframe instead of using regular
links. Rather than make an actual module, I was thinking of just
making BibleTime embed an iframe with the requested material in the
parallel view. BibleTime's parallel view has versions laid out in
parallel columns in a <table> element with one verse per <td>.
Dedicating an entire column to an embedded iframe with a Bible Gateway
page would avoid the embedding of a whole page per verse but still
allow the text to be viewed.

There isn't really a way within a SWORD module to do what I suggested
above, you would have to provide a separate iframe for each verse.
However, you could provide an extension to SWModule to do it or
implement it within each application.

*insert same message about BibleCS here*

>
> When this module is viewed as a commentary (which is really more the
> intended use), the text of the link "<a href=...." appears for  each entry.
> Is this methodology on the roadmap? Is it shunned as bad technology? Is this
> module (or it's grandchild) something that belongs in the development repo?
> (Currently the module is for NIV only...  when I tried to multiply it by the
> dozen or so English texts, it overloaded my system.)

Which application displays it that way? A commentary should not be
handling the text differently from anything else.

--Greg

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