[sword-devel] Improve SWORD handling for chapter descriptions

[David Haslam]

Some historic Bible translations have chapter descriptions.

One such example is the 1769 Benjamin Blayney Oxford Edition of the KJV
which is the reference text for our KJV module.

See https://crosswire.org/wiki/CrossWire_KJV

Our roadmap plans for the KJV module already include "Add NT/OT chapter
descriptions".

The USFM standard already has a marker \cd for a chapter description.

Refer to the USFM User Reference at http://paratext.org/usfm

Our Module Tools to convert USFM to OSIS doesn't properly address the true
nature of a chapter description, so we end up with yet another form of title
element. This is not ideal!

As it stands, we would even require presentational formating to render these
in italics and centre them like they are for the example printed Bibles.

Better rather to define a dedicated element in OSIS for a chapter
description, and then to enhance the SWORD engine and adjust our module
tools to render them properly.

We could go even further. We could mark each of the verse numbers usually
found in chapter descriptions as an osisRef link to the corresponding verse
in the chapter. This would facilitate jumping straight from the chapter
description to the verse. For mobile devices with small screens this would
be particularly beneficial, as it would be more convenient than scrolling.

cf. I have just added an issue to the United Bible Societies Institute for
Computer Assisted Publishing USFM github repository - to propose adding a
character level marker for this purpose. 

See https://github.com/ubsicap/usfm/issues/41

With USFM 3.0 being on the horizon, I am hopeful that this proposal will be
received favorably by the USFM team.

Best regards,

David







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