[sword-devel] Bible book introductions

David Instone-Brewer Technical at Tyndale.cam.ac.uk
Mon Jun 3 13:11:31 MST 2013


Agreed - they are in many Greek texts, though absent from those which 
are regarded as earlier texts.
As a result, most modern versions omit them - including the New King James!
They shouldn't be treated like Red letter or Section titles, because 
they are part of the text, and if they are included by a version, the 
reader shouldn't have the choice of not seeing them.

However, it would be useful to have a marker to warn the program 
whether they are present or not, to help with interlinears etc.

David IB

At 16:56 03/06/2013, DM Smith wrote:
>Note, the colophons in the KJV are from the underlying Greek text.
>
>In Him,
>DM
>
>On Jun 3, 2013, at 7:04 AM, Chris Burrell 
><<mailto:chris at burrell.me.uk>chris at burrell.me.uk> wrote:
>
>>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 
>><<mailto:chris at burrell.me.uk>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" 
>><<mailto:chrislit at crosswire.org>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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