[sword-devel] USFM -> OSIS -> Sword

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Kahunapule Michael Johnson <
kahunapule at mpj.cx> wrote:

>  On 03/06/2012 12:47 AM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
>
>
>>    1. You accurately preserve all of the original text and punctuation
>>    (including quotation punctuation) exactly as it was in the original USFM.
>>    This involves the complete process from module creation to display in all
>>    front ends. This is an absolute requirement with respect to the canonical
>>    text. If this condition isn't met, then I don't have permission to convert
>>    these Scriptures to Sword format, nor do you have such permission.
>>
>>
> I'm afraid I do not understand how either you or CrossWire can ensure that
> *all* front ends display all text correctly.  I have no idea from your
> descriptions whether BPBible or any other frontends would meet the
> requirements currently.  However, even if they did it is conceivable that a
> new front end is created which does not meet the requirements.  Does this
> mean that CrossWire immediately loses permission to distribute the text for
> use in any of the front ends? (including all the front ends that are
> compliant, of course).
>
>
> That is a very good question-- one that I really don't want to have to
> raise with the copyright owners!
>
> At a minimum, noncompliant front ends may not use the texts if they cannot
> do so without corrupting them.
>

A couple of things:
1. Non-compliant frontends do not use the text: users do.
2. Non-compliant frontends do not distribute modules: CrossWire (or some
other organisation) does.


>
> I'm not talking about getting all of the formatting correct. I'm just
> talking about exactly preserving all text and punctuation of the canonical
> text. If a front end cannot do that, it should be withdrawn from public
> distribution, as it is clearly a threat to our ability to distribute
> Scriptures. Actually, there is a greater threat that copyrights: the fear
> of God. I wouldn't want to be caught dead or alive corrupting the Holy
> Bible. I would think that you wouldn't, either. It is a fearsome thing to
> fall into the hands of God when He is angry.
>

All of this assumes knowledge of errors.  Unless you manually test every
verse of every Bible in every frontend, some could display a result
different from what you expected.  I know that at different times I have
seen some unusual bugs.
A few (real world) cases:
1. A bug in BPBible meant that when Strong's Numbers were displayed, some
verses in the Chinese would not display.
2. A bug in encoding meant opening a Bible to a particular chapter would
raise an error message.
3. Incorrect font usage meant that the text displayed completely wrongly.

When these bugs are encountered and reported, we will fix them, but I
cannot write (consistently) bug-free code and I don't think I've ever met a
developer who can.  Certainly a fairly high percentage of the module
rendering errors that are reported to me in BPBible are caused by modules I
had never used (often in languages I did not know), and where for whatever
reason my assumptions were wrong.

Jon


>
> I'm glad He is also merciful and full of grace, but I don't want to test
> His limits.
>
>
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