[sword-devel] proposed patch: adding n=X marker content to footnotes and xrefs

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Dear Greg,

I respect your opinion, but... you're wrong ;)

None of the arguments given are persuasive to me.

1) footnote are for external reference.

This cannot be true if the software application always starts with 
generating their own footnotes at the start of the text.

For example.  If I ask to see John.1.1-7 and footnotes are labeled A, B, 
C, D, E, F, G

Then I ask to see John.1.2-8 and footnotes read A, B, C, D, E, F, G...

as with every online software I've seen which supplies independent 
footnote labels for the NASB, this means that the software is NOT using 
the supplied labels, but generating their own.

Your 2 patches applied and built cleanly.  Thank you!  We're moving over 
to ga1 (+ your patches) this weekend.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for your help,

Troy




On 02/11/2012 04:27 PM, Greg Hellings wrote:
> I just wanted to reply to the following by Troy and also to his
> comments in #xiphos regarding this topic
>
>> BibleCS, per my preference, only shows hover-over symbols for the note or cross reference, and does not
>> include the 'n' label. BibleCS uses different filters though, so not affected.
>>
>> SWORDWeb will be affected.
>>
>> My thought on this is similar to strongs. Don't show the numbers. They are left overs from the era of print-
>> only.
>>
>> The exception use case is possibly our NET module which has a commentary accompaniment module
>> which might refer to footnotes by label.  If I remember correctly.
>>
>> So, I would like the choice to not have the label for the frontends I maintain, but if users really want to see
>> the label, I could be swayed on this point, wearing my frontend developer hat.
>
> I see both this and previous discussions regarding module-provided
> stylesheets as being symptomatic of the same question: Who owns
> content and is responsible for its display? Troy, and others here,
> seem to be of the opinion that what the frontend developer wants is
> the be-all-end-all and that the wishes of the module creator can and
> ought to be ignored completely.  If we want to attract major text
> publishers, I'm not sure this is the attitude we ought to have.
>
> What I have tried to propose before with CSS, and what Karl has
> proposed here with footnote and cross-reference notes is that the
> application ought to provide good defaults (generated cross-reference
> and footnote markers when they are lacking) but to honor the module
> creator's request when it is given. The n=X attribute on OSIS exists
> exactly for the purpose of giving the module creator power over his
> footnote markers. If our applications ignore that, then it would
> properly be categorized as a shortfall in our support of OSIS. Far
> from being a "feature" it is, actually, a bug. Publishers are likely
> to feel the same in some circumstances.
>
> Lack of support for n=X and for module-supplied styles was a major
> reason for the LSDevLinux (portion of Wycliffe I work with) deciding
> to use Xiphos instead of any of the other SWORD applications. They saw
> that all the other applications completely ignored what they, as the
> module creators, wanted to do with THEIR content and chose an
> application that did not ignore their wishes. In #xiphos Troy cited
> various online publications of Bible texts as being his validation for
> ignoring the n=X attribute. While this is perfectly valid for a text
> with footnotes restarted on each page (as is typical of print Bibles -
> they tend to have footnotes per page and they restart at the beginning
> of each new physical page or spread) it is not valid for texts where
> endnotes or footnotes-per-chapter are used. In cases like this the
> default behavior is supposed to be overridden by the n=X attribute
> marker, allowing the content publisher to specify "This is footnote 1,
> this is xref A, this is footnote 1b" etc. But Troy wants to completely
> disregard that wish.  Why do you think you know better than the module
> creator?
>
> The purpose of the application ought to be to provide valid defaults
> (generate markers when they are missing), to prevent display of
> components which break functionality (e.g. large images on a small
> form-factor screen), and possibly to give the user the option of
> turning on and off behavior like this. It should not be to render
> impotent the content developers. If we start doing that, we will end
> up with the likes of WinMo IE from back in the 5/6 version area where
> IE displayed nothing but basic HTML and was therefore ignored. Content
> publishers couldn't make what they wanted and users couldn't choose to
> enable or disable features they wanted. Let's not end up like that and
> let's give our module creators the power we advertise (through OSIS
> support).
>
> --Greg
>
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