[sword-devel] Some questions about the WEB module

[Mike Hart]

For what it's worth: 


I've lately seen in some online help menus and peripheral documentation that Paratext 7.3 will support a newer version of USFM. The latest is 2.35 but it's changed multiple times in the last couple months, and as far as I know 7.3 isn't out yet.  2.35 appears to be a full and final release, but... I'd wait until Paratext 7.3 is released.  Our group isn't in the core of Paratext development, so we're slow to get updates. I think we are on the latest stable release 7.2.163.0, but 7.3 may already be out and we aren't on it yet.   The point is that USFM is apparently under revision. Most of the changes are designed to support a richer paper bible experience (Study Bible sidebars defined in the same project file as the Bible) and to further separate the translation process from paper markup (deprecating tags for emphasised, small caps, etc, more emphasis on using meaning filled tags like 'words of God', etc.) Since things are being deprecated, it's worth
 reviewing the USFM 2.35 spec ( or the latest once 7.3 IS released) before embarking on a redo project of the USFM2OSIS script. 

http://paratext.ubs-translations.org/about/usfm 


(the "documentation" section about 70% down the page)


Draft USFM Stylesheets 


You might also consider that the stylesheets available on that page 
contain style definitions for the USFM tagging system in it's entirety in a heirarchial form 
(as far as I know it's complete.) That is, The stylesheet is probably 
vastly more useful than the documentation for someone attempting an 
USFM2OSIS or USFM2anything script from scratch, or for maintaining a 
script..... 


---


After reviewing today, apparently my words "deprecated tags" have been lessened from an earlier draft copy (2.33?)  I last reviewed to a 'strong recommendation against' the use of hard character styling.  Apparently it is the direction USFM is going, but they slowed down the train.


http://ubs-icap.org/chm/usfm/2.35/special_text_character_styles.htm

---


Latest USFM Manual 


I note that the Crosswire wiki has a nonworking link for latest USFM.  This might be the best replacement:

http://ubs-icap.org/chm/usfm/


Which seems to say that 2.35 is no longer draft but final. 




________________________________
 From: Chris Little <chrislit at crosswire.org>

One of my personal Summer projects will be to write a USFM to OSIS converter from scratch, but for that I won't be touching the usfm2osis.pl codebase. Given how much we use usfm2osis.pl and how well it does its job, we really can't have big changes to the existing code that cause regressions in functionality. (Abundant unit & regression tests will be a feature of the re-written converter, but for now, we have essentially nothing to identify when changes to the code have unintended consequences--aside from diff maybe.)

--Chris

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