[sword-devel] Why Sword?

[Martin Gruner]

Hello Chris,

> To my understanding, based on what Troy has told me, the translation
> functions we have could be used for any string.  All our
> library/front-end strings could be put into the locale files with
> translations to provide l10n across the library.  So, I think the
> functionality exists in the library, though it hasn't yet been used to
> its full potential.  Correct me if I'm wrong. I may have misunderstood
> Troy. :)

I may too. But AFAIK the Locale mechanism you're referring to does only cover 
the 66 KJV-style booknames and abbreviations. It could probably be extended 
somewhat, say for different versification schemes. But you could not 
translate any string you want. And if a frontend program wanted to do the 
translation of its messages, it would have to change the sword locale files!

> > =) I really hope it were so. ;) We should work more on
> > documentation, esp.
> > making the api-ref more complete and explaining.
>
> I agree.  The API primer that we keep directing potential users to could
> really use some cleanup.  It's confusing, out of date, and doesn't
> reflect the kinds of things implementers would actually do.

It would be nice if somebody with in-depth knowledge of sword could go 
through all the header files, and correct/add the JavaDoc style comments. At 
the moment classes have many undocumented members, and some classes are not 
documented (and therefore hidden in the api-docs) or uncorrectly documented 
(esp. some of the recently introduces ones). We should try to make 
documenting the (public api) classes a part of programming itself.

Martin