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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear All,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">If I understand Arnaud correctly, I
really like his ideas. The BEST part is that the next time a Bible
is submitted for processing with yet another unique versification
(after the changes are implemented), it doesn't have to be either
force-fit into a versification that doesn't fit or wait for
decades for someone to update the hard-coded versifications in the
Sword engine, and for those to be incorporated into all of the
front ends.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I regard the current minimalist
versification system to be seriously in need of an upgrade. It is
based on false assumptions (listed by Troy, no offense intended)
that seemed good at the time they were made. However, with 1404
Bible translations (and counting) is that (1) 90% success is an
over-estimate of how well it works, and (2) Sword versification is
a complete failure for numerous projects because none of the
existing versifications fit, the fall-back mechanisms fail and
result in wrong outputs or crashes in osis2mod, and nobody is
actively fixing the situation.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I have found the following to be true:</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">The number of versifications needed to
represent all Bibles properly tomorrow is highly likely to be more
than the number that works today. Hard-coding versifications into
slowly-changing code that is only updated in fits and starts is
doomed to fail (and already has, in my not-so-humble opinion).<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Verse numbers in a chapter don't always
proceed in numerical order. Several Bible translations move the
statement about the motion of the shadow on Hezekaiah's steps to a
more logical place in terms of discourse, without changing the
verse numbers. Indeed, they split verses into segments and
straddle other verses with them.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Chapter and verse "numbers" aren't
always pure numbers. Letters get involved in the
Deuterocanon/Apocrypha. Some Bible translators like to use verse
segments (like 6a and 6b) heavily.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Verse bridges (like verse 1-3 with
everything from verses 1 through 3 but possibly rearranged and
with no other verse markings within them) are very common.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Mapping any arbitrary versification to
any other is NICE, but NOT NECESSARY. Displaying the text as the
translators intended is NECESSARY. If you can do both, do it. If
you cannot, at least display the versification of the Bible
translation as the translator intended.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I am fully aware of the changes in
architecture and code adapting to the realities I perceive imply.
At this point, I'm not sure if modifying the Sword engine or
rewriting it would be easier. Either way, it is a lot of work.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It is my understanding that JSword is a
bit better than Sword in this regard, in that it doesn't assume
fixed versifications.<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">As far as volunteering for pumpkin
holder for versifications, I nominate Arnaud. (I already bit off
more than I can chew by myself. Sorry.)<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/19/24 14:23, Troy A. Griffitts
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:761f3c36-7f21-4ab4-94f2-f606d968f6da@crosswire.org">
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<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>These comments are a mix of background, history, and thoughts:</p>
<p>1) VERSIFICATION (v11n):</p>
<p>Variation between reference systems sucks. Until you get into
the weeds of the details, it is normal to assume the problems
are not complex. SWORD tries to implement a simple 90%
solution.<br>
</p>
<p>SWORD and JSword support defined abstract versification schemes
with 3 simple dimensions: [bookid : chapterMax][chapterNumber :
verseMax][verseNumber : verseEntry]<br>
</p>
<p>Conceptually we also operate on these assumptions (I've skimmed
the proposal by Arnaud which differs here, but I haven't given
it the thought it deserves to comment yet): that book order is
defined in the v11n system; that chapter and verse numbers are
numeric and begin at 1 and increase to verseMax. We also
allocate a special slot '0' for: Module Introduction; Testament
Introduction; Book Introduction; and Chapter Introduction (e.g.,
Matt.0.0 can hold an introduction to Matthew).<br>
</p>
<p>Those who have been exposed to many Bibles will immediately
think of places these assumption fall short. But for >90% of
our Bibles, these assumption hold true, and these assumption
make many aspects of our work much simpler (abstract parsing of
verse lists and ranges, bookmark ordering, etc.).</p>
<p>Historically, SWORD previously supported dynamic, per module,
versification, with a 3 phase lookup:</p>
index file .bks[book number] = book offset in next index;<br>
index file .cps[book offset + chapter number] = chapter offset in
next index;<br>
index file .vss[chapter offset + verse number] = verse offset and
entry size in data file.
<p>20 years or so, we made the decision to begin the hard work to
understand versification systems within Bibles so we could begin
to map them appropriately. This let us remove the .bks, and
.cps index files and store that data in versification system
definitions, leaving only the final .vss index file which gave
the offsets and entry sizes into the data file.</p>
<p>Caring about versifications was a decision we made. Our
previous design let any Bible decide how many books, how many
chapters, and how many verses each chapter contained. This had
its merits because any new versification could be defined in
each module without anyone caring what it was. But the drawback
was the same: any Bible could decide how many books, how many
chapters, and how many verses without anyone knowing why or what
they were.</p>
<p>Some have pushed for dynamic definitions of v11n systems again,
and I understand why. I am in favor of moving forward with a
hybrid approach: a set of defined versification systems, which a
module will still need to choose from, to which it most closely
adheres, + the ability for that module to specify its variation.<br>
</p>
<p>Toward 98%: We have tried to work around the cons of this
simple design and approach 100% support by accounting for the
most common types of problems, e.g.</p>
<ul>
<li>The engine allows common verse suffixes (e.g. Matt.2.7b);</li>
<li>The engine skips verses in a Bible which are not present--
this allows us to create v11n schemes which are a superset of
n number of closely related v11n schemes, knowing that the
engine will skip over the verses that are not present in the
module; We also have tools which print out missing verses
which has proven a good QA check for our modules team.<br>
</li>
<li>When we run across a Bible which adds an odd verse here or
there or an out of order verse, our workaround has been to
append these to end of the verse just before where they should
appear, so the text flows the same as the printed Bible, and
we include for the reader an inline visual separator and
marker showing the publisher's verse number.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>These work arounds get us pretty close to being able to support
98% of our Bibles exactly as the publisher wishes, and the
remaining 2% is supported "well enough" for no complaints by
publishers. Could we build a system which allowed out of order
verses, or which allowed any scheme a Bible wished to follow?
Sure, but the added complexity for various tasks increases quite
a bit for some of these allowances-- e.g., think index math for
book chapter verse when we cannot assume numeric sequence; think
abstract ordering of bookmarks not tied to any specific Bible,
search results across Bibles, etc.<br>
</p>
<p>Our vision with v11n definitions is that they will be a few as
possible allowing us to map between them most easily; and as
many as necessary to allow us to represent well enough a
published work.<br>
</p>
<p>Chris Little previously was our versification pumpkin holder
and did some amazing work researching all this material. As a
demonstration of his thorough work and an example of the
difficulties with v11n, see his work on just the LXX tradition:</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword-tools/trunk/versification/lxx_v11ns/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword-tools/trunk/versification/lxx_v11ns/</a></p>
<p>Chris has left our community after many years of volunteering
massive time and effort.</p>
<p>We haven't had anyone step up who is willing to commit the time
and effort necessary and who holds our vision (as few as
possible, as many as necessary).</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>2) MAPPINGS:</p>
<p>SWORD and JSword support v11n to v11n mappings. Graciously,
Костя Маслюк worked with us for over a year to discuss the
problems and implement a versification mapping system which has
been included in the engine. He also added v11n mappings for
systems he was interested in supporting. If anyone is
interesting in the discussions, they can see the archives, e.g.,</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2013-July/040154.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2013-July/040154.html</a></p>
<p>Historically, we called this topic alternate versification, so
if you see "av11n" in the archives, you'll be aware.</p>
<p>Registering v11n systems and mappings in the engine is
straightforward in our versification manager, and as you can
see, loading these dynamically from a file would be simple to
implement:</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/src/mgr/versificationmgr.cpp"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/src/mgr/versificationmgr.cpp</a></p>
<p>During the development of the mapping infrastructure, our proof
of concept was to see if we could concisely build a parallel
Bible HTML display across versification systems, letting a user
specify any number of Bibles, the first Bible v11n being the
primary ordering driver:</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/examples/tasks/parallelBibles.cpp"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/examples/tasks/parallelBibles.cpp</a></p>
<p>____<br>
</p>
<p>So, now to the issue with adding another Catholic versification
system. I would love to continue to delegate ownership of v11n
decisions! I trusted Chris. He said "no" all the time, and
only allowed new versification definitions if we really couldn't
support a set of Bibles using an existing system with our work
arounds. He spent the time necessary to understand the
traditions, which published works would use the proposed
versification, he had excellent skills clearly delineating
systems-- generally he made well informed decisions from many
hours of research.<br>
</p>
<p>I don't understand the complex details nor have the time to do
the research for each individual request. My first thought is,
where is Chris?! Next, my uninformed mind thinks: we have v11n
definitions "Catholic" and "Catholic2"! Why do we need an
additional Catholic versification system? Did we do a bad job
with the first two? Can we not follow our principles and create
a superset between 2 or more of these? And of course, these are
not proper responses.<br>
</p>
<p>So, if anyone is prayfully willing to take up this pumpkin-- to
put in the time necessary to research Bible traditions and
published works, to truly understands both the pros and cons of
the decisions we've made to go down the path we are on, along
with our workarounds for the cons, and is willing to live
wholeheartedly with where we are now, but certainly always open
to improve, I would love for that person to take ownership of
versification.</p>
<p>I appreciate the pointers to the Paratext v11ns and mappings,
maybe we compare where we are now with what they have.</p>
<p>Thank you all for being zealous to improve things. Looking
forward the conversation to follow,</p>
<p>Troy<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>On 1/26/24 06:10, Arnaud Vié wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CA+kNJPg9QBgJihHAuXnoX4_LuUAW4jF_iv98+f5DCQRKopiwBw@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hello everyone,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm the person Cyrille mentioned, and I just joined the
mailing list as I thought I could maybe explain a bit more
what I'm trying to do with this new versification.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>1. Problem statement</b><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Simply put, my objective is to be able to align
verse-by-verse the contents of two bibles that use different
versifications.</div>
<div>For example :</div>
<div>- I open Daniel 3 in a Catholic bible, it has 100 verses
because the Prayer of Azariah is included.</div>
<div>- I want to compare the translation verse by verse with,
for example, the KJVA. This means I want to see the Daniel 3
from KJVA, with all verses from PrAzar included in the
corresponding place.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There was already logic to perform such mapping in
jsword, and I recently included it to support
deuterocanonical contents (on the AndBible fork, since
that's the only one where I got answers from the maintainer)
: <a href="https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/pull/13"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/pull/13</a> </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now, the problem is to be able to do the same with the
deuterocanonical additions to the book of Esther, because
there are many different "strategies" adopted by different
bibles.</div>
<div>- Protestant bibles, when they have it, usually have it a
separate books (AddEsth in KJVA).</div>
<div>- Some catholic bibles have it as additional chapters at
the end of Esther, making Esther 16 chapters long : that's
the existing "Catholic2" versification, which maps to KJVA
easily : <a
href="https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/blob/develop/src/main/resources/org/crosswire/jsword/versification/Catholic2.properties#L392"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/blob/develop/src/main/resources/org/crosswire/jsword/versification/Catholic2.properties#L392</a>
<br>
</div>
<div>- Most catholic bibles actually have the additions
integrated directly within the original text, using lettered
verse numbers (13A, 13B, etc., see here for example : <a
href="https://www.aelf.org/bible/Est/3"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.aelf.org/bible/Est/3</a>
)<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Currently, these catholic bible with the text integrated
use the "Catholic" versification, and ignore all the
lettered verses (or include the letters as raw text) :
basically, Esther 3.13 with these additions becomes one
single very long verse. This makes it impossible to map
properly with the AddEsth of KJVA.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>2. Proposed solution (Catholic3 versification)</b><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>With the proposed Catholic3 versification (except it
needs a few adjustments compared to the file proposed by
Cyrille), what I'd like to achieve is to give a unique verse
number to each of those.</div>
<div>For example, Esther 3 goes from 15 to 22 verses, with the
OSIS IDs becoming :</div>
<div>- Esth.3.13 for verse 13</div>
<div>- Esth.3.14 for verse 13A...</div>
<div>- Esth.3.20 for verse 13G</div>
<div>- Esth.3.21 for verse 14<br>
</div>
<div>(Basically, the OSIS ID identifies the position of the
verse; the actual numbering from the bible can be preserved
separately with the OSIS "n" attribute or the "\vp" USFM
keyword.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">would
your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h was<br>
modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23,
22, 47, 29,<br>
14, 10, 41, 32, 14?</blockquote>
<div>Since my objective is to allow mapping verse by verse,
you'll understand that I need the verse counts to be aligned
with the actual usage. Having the "versification" allow more
verses than what's actually used defeats the purpose.</div>
<div>In addition, I believe it's a very bad idea to make big
changes to already published versifications : the point of
versifications is to give a unique ID to a verse. Updating a
versification will change all IDs for the verses of already
existing bibles that use this versification.</div>
<div>I really believe the best solution for the time being is
to create a new Catholic3 versification, as originally
suggested.<br>
I can provide the full definition very soon (though since
I'm working with JSword it will be in Java format first),
and it should in theory be aligned with Catholic and
Catholic2 except for these differences in Esther. (I'll
check if there are more differences I missed).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>3. Modular versifications</b><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">I
think at some point it would be nice to have per-book
versifications<br>
or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a
"standard"<br>
versification</blockquote>
<div>Agreed.<br>
</div>
<div>If everyone is open to the idea, I'd like to work in the
next few months on an extension of the OSIS standard to
define "modular" versifications, ie. versifications that can
be built by composing other versifications and applying a
diff.</div>
<div>Then each bible could, in its document header, not only
reference a standard versification with refSystem, but
include its own specific changes and how they map to the
standard.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Before I spend time on the topic though, is there anyone
in particular I should ask to approve the general idea, and
who would be interested in reviewing proposals on the topic
?<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks all and best regards,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Arnaud<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Le jeu. 25 janv. 2024
à 16:35, pinoaffe <<a href="mailto:pinoaffe@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">pinoaffe@gmail.com</a>>
a écrit :<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
Hello,<br>
<br>
I don't know much about catholic bibles or sword, but just
out of<br>
curiosity: would your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h
was<br>
modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23,
22, 47, 29,<br>
14, 10, 41, 32, 14? Or would the decreases in verse counts
in other<br>
chapters of other books also be necessary?<br>
<br>
And would such a change be acceptable to others?<br>
<br>
The catholic bibles I've encountered "in the wild" are the
dutch<br>
Willibrordvertaling of 1975 and the neovulgate. Both of
these appear to<br>
follow canon_catholic3.h everywhere except in Esther, where
they have 16<br>
chapters<br>
<br>
I think at some point it would be nice to have per-book
versifications<br>
or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a
"standard"<br>
versification, but for now we'll have to make do with what
we got<br>
<br>
Kind regards,<br>
pinoaffe<br>
<br>
Fr Cyrille <<a href="mailto:fr.cyrille@tiberiade.be"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">fr.cyrille@tiberiade.be</a>>
writes:<br>
> Hello,<br>
> Recently a person interested in the Catholic bible in
French told me<br>
> about the mapping problems between Catholic
versification and the kjva<br>
> concerning Esther. So I'm bringing up the question of a
new Catholic<br>
> versification that could better deal with this kind of
problem and at<br>
> the same time incorporate some of the errors in current
Catholic<br>
> versifications. I should mention that two
versifications for French<br>
> Bibles have been added since my proposal for a new
Catholic<br>
> versification, which was made long before these
versifications were<br>
> added, and which was not favorably received at the
time. In our case,<br>
> the number of Bibles that follow this versification is
simply<br>
> enormous, since the majority of Catholic Bibles do. I
would also add<br>
> that the LXX versification is not entirely correct.
There are no LXX<br>
> today that put 16 chapters to Esther. Ralph's already
uses letters to<br>
> integrate Greek passages into the text.<br>
> In fact, Catholic versification simply follows Ralph's.
So I suggest<br>
> that we seriously reopen this question with concrete
suggestions.<br>
> For my part, the suggestion is simple: convert the
numbers in the<br>
> Greek passages into verses and offset the numbered
verses in the same<br>
> chapters. I'll copy you on what that might look like.<br>
><br>
> Br Cyrille<br>
><br>
> [2. text/x-chdr; canon_catholic3.h]...<br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
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