[sword-devel] Sword support of indents and line breaks

Sat Apr 13 00:47:31 MST 2013

John,

I'm trying to sympathize with you, but I'm having a hard time. I still have no clue WHAT the translator is trying to convey to the reader with the indent. Can you explain?

John Austin <gpl.programs.info at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>On 04/13/2013 09:24 AM, Chris Little wrote:
>> On 4/12/2013 11:18 AM, John Austin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 04/12/2013 07:45 PM, Chris Little wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>> I've worked with many, many SFM texts, and they often do not
>follow SFM
>>>>> rules or play nice in a variety of ways. All of this greatly
>>>>> complicates
>>>>> an already serious conversion from SFM to Sword. The proof may in
>the
>>>>> the pudding. Simple is sometimes better in the real world. Sure,
>IBT
>>>>> could recreate their modules using container elements, but that
>still
>>>>> would not provide the reliability or control enjoyed by the
>existing
>>>>> modules. I still don't see (beyond theory and arguable semantics)
>a
>>>>> good
>>>>> reason to deny "customers" a sound and working solution.
>>>>
>>>> As a rule, we don't do things incorrectly when we know that they
>are
>>>> wrong beforehand. Indent milestones are arbitrary, ad hoc, bad
>>>> engineering practice, and bad markup practice. Generating &nbsp;s
>as
>>>> pretend paragraph indentation is bad (X)HTML and completely
>inflexible.
>>>> (What happens when a content provider wants a half indent? A
>hanging
>>>> indent?) The proposal is a big kludge. We should instead implement
>the
>>>> correct method of generating indented and other paragraph types.
>>> They work perfectly well. They validate against the OSIS schema.
>They
>>> are good engineering practice because they solve a difficult problem
>>> without negative effects of any kind. We can argue about bad markup
>etc.
>>> but some grace should be given to an approach that is proven and
>>> perfectly valid, which already exists in practice, and which has
>solved
>>> a nagging real life problem.
>>
>> They don't work perfectly well.
>>
>> In terms of representation, the milestones represent something that
>> isn't there and should instead be a property of something that
>actually
>> is there.
>>
>> In terms of the formatted output (the (X)HTML), you're emitting
>> something extremely bad. You want indentation, which is a formatting
>> matter. To achieve your intended formatting you are corrupting the
>> character data stream by inserting NBSPs to cause a side effect:
>> horizontal spacing. If you want to change horizontal position, you
>> should do so through one of the established methods, not as a side
>> effect of inserting characters that have different semantics.
>>
>> Consider this: When you copy & paste text from a front end or
>webpage,
>> should the indentation be copied as a bunch of NBSPs? Hopefully you
>> agree it should not. The NBSPs are noise that has been inserted into
>the
>> character stream. (If you try this on the PDF you linked and the
>> rendering by phpsword, you can see that they behave differently when
>you
>> copy text and paste it into a word processor or text editor. That's
>> because the PDF does formatting correctly using PDF layout methods,
>but
>> phpsword relies on a side effect.)
>
>The issue is not how the indent is implemented by the engine. It is the
>
>acceptance of these translator dictated elements as valid milestone 
>content in the OSIS file, and Sword recognizing and implementing these 
>indents as indents.
>
>>
>>
>>> Actually, the line I copied above is the whole "paragraph"- it is
>not a
>>> multi-line anything. See
>>> http://ibt.org.ru/en/text.htm?m=UZVL&l=Ruth.1.15&g=0 for the real
>>> location of this example. These two words are not a paragraph in
>>> anyone's book, and to call this a paragraph, as you insist that I
>must
>>> do to use Sword, is in my book: "arbitrary, ad hoc, bad engineering
>>> practice, and bad markup practice", and just wrong. Let publishers
>>> decide what it is and what it will look like- users of Sword will
>all be
>>> glad!
>>
>> Abstractly, it's multi-line. Some (most?) of these paragraphs are
>> multi-line. Even your two word example would be multi-line with a
>> sufficiently narrow column. These paragraphs break in exactly the
>same
>> way as other paragraphs.
>>
>> I still can't see the argument for these not being paragraphs. I
>would
>> accept that they could be a different type of paragraph from the type
>> that starts at the start of a sentence, but they are clearly
>paragraphs.
>> Paragraphs with hanging indents are markedly more different than
>these,
>> but they're still paragraphs.
>
>I still can't see the argument for requiring that everyone call these 
>questionable instances paragraphs, and require that they must always be
>
>marked up as such. Why not give the publisher the option of calling it
>a 
>paragraph if they consider it a paragraph, or else calling it an indent
>
>if they think it will be more correctly understood as an indent? For 
>instance, many people consider that a paragraph should be followed by a
>
>blank line (between paragraphs). What if I desire that this indented 
>line in my translation should never have a blank line after it, and
>that 
>it is an actual indent which is the content I intend to add- in order
>to 
>make my text more understandable? Then I should be able to call it an 
>indent. I would be very correct in doing so. Future readers of my OSIS 
>file would also unambiguously understand my intentions as well.
>
>
>>
>> --Chris
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>
>_______________________________________________
>sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page

-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/attachments/20130413/ffc0cc10/attachment.html>