[sword-devel] Second versions, Scottish Metric Psalter

Peter von Kaehne refdoc at crosswire.org
Sat Jan 12 03:09:58 MST 2019


The Scottish Metric Psalter is a curious translation - on the one side
famously literal, on the other side deliberately in a poem form. It has
now been used for hundreds of years in public worship, in some churches
as an additional source of hymns, in others exclusively so as the only
permitted source of worship songs (again, another Scottish curiosity).

I have reformatted the 1650 version into USFM. This version is
underlying much of more modern editions and is really quite
understandable already, despite its age. 

https://github.com/refdoc/The-Scottish-Metric-Psalter-1650

But before I make a module from it I need to solve one conundrum - 11
or 12 psalms have two translations. I could cut the second versions out
- but that feels wrong. I could banish them into a footnote each - but
the footnote would be enormously long and it would loose its poetic
formatting. I have thought of the variant reading mark up - but this is
currently quite underdeveloped in the engine and certainly does not
seem to be up to whole chapters of variant readings.

I finally have thought of reversifying the second version and make
those psalms essentially double length - but our handling of such
overlong chapters is not grand either.

Any other options I have not thought of? 

Peter





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