[sword-devel] Bible book introductions

[Chris Burrell]

For clarity, my use case is as follows.

I have a menu displaying options such as Verse numbers, Headings, Verses on
New Lines, Red letters. I'd like to add an option called Introductions (and
perhaps one called Colophon).

The options in this menu are grayed out when the underlying module doesn't
support this. If the option is grayed out, I add an explanation as to why
that is (e.g. the module doesn't support it, or 1 option is not compatible
with another option that is already selected, etc.)

The availability of the options is uniquely dependant on which version of
the Bible or Commentary a user has selected. If a user selects a different
module, the options available to him are updated automatically. For
example, a user is clearly aware that most of the Old Testament doesn't
have a Red Letter option. He might however work mainly from the ESV and
want his frontend to show Jesus's words in red when they are in the text,
so he sets up the option once.

At this stage, we don't care about what passage/text a user is going to
lookup. We can't guess what's in his mind! And we can certainly not guess
what he's going to lookup tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next month,
next year.

This is the same for Introductions & Colophons. He might decide he's never
interested in seeing Introductions and Colophons and want to turn them off
completely. Or on the other hand he might want to turn them on all the time
because he is always interested in them.

But a toggle button available to turn the introductions on/off is pretty
pointless if the module doesn't have any. In actual fact, it's pretty
annoying because it looks like there may be a bug, since in the ASV
toggling this option never makes a difference. In the same way a toggle
button to turn red letters on/off for the ASV is pretty useless as well.

It should be obvious by now that having Sword/JSword being able to tell a
frontend whether or not Introductions are contained within a module is a
big plus to what we have now.

Chris



On 3 June 2013 07:26, Chris Burrell <chris at burrell.me.uk> wrote:

> One could apply your reasoning for every option we have in the Conf file
> so far.
>
> Headings, notes, cross references, strongs, morphology... A verse or
> chapter is not guaranteed to contain any of these. You still need to check
> for non empty cross references for example if your frontend is displaying
> them in a separate pane. Same as strong numbers if you're doing
> interlinears.
>
> The option doesn't guarantee anything. It's there to indicate a module
> supports a particular features. It's at least that was my understanding.
>
> Isn't the whole point of the options to allow the user to set up his
> preferred view for reading the Bible so that as he goes from one chapter to
> another he doesn't need to click options on and off as they randomly
> appear.
>
> Please do tell how I'm supposed to identify whether a Bible has
> introductions without reading the whole Bible.
>
> Chris
> On 2 Jun 2013 22:48, "Chris Little" <chrislit at crosswire.org> wrote:
>
>> On 6/2/2013 9:23 AM, Chris Burrell wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Some books have Bible introductions. Can I suggest adding a flag to the
>>> conf file to indicate this is the case? In the similar mindset as a
>>> previous post, I'd prefer being able to query the conf file for features
>>> of a particular module rather than having to read part of the module and
>>> hope for that particular book/chapter to have an introduction. A yes/no
>>> flag in the .conf file would be helpful.
>>>
>>> (In particular, I have in mind the book introductions that are part of
>>> the ESV text). But no doubt other modules will also (or in the future
>>> will also) have the same aspects.
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>
>> I would say no. This doesn't add anything.
>>
>> Identifying that a module possesses introductions at some level does not
>> indicate that it possesses all of the introductions at that level.
>> Accordingly, knowing that a module possesses introductions still requires
>> checking for non-empty contents in order to know that a particular
>> introduction is non-empty.
>>
>> This is along the lines of the request for a Scope .conf entry, which was
>> already rejected. Whatever solution is used for that case can also be used
>> for introductions.
>>
>> --Chris
>>
>>
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