[sword-devel] Other religions?

[David's Mailing List and Spam Receiver]

On Thursday 15 April 2004 04:31 am, Mete Kural wrote:
> I also found Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, The
> Hebrew Tanakh, and installed it using the Install
> Manager. The Tanakh appeared on the left half of the
> program window while the Quran appeared on the right
> half. It was very easy to navigate through the Tanakh
> by simply using the chapter and verse controls but it
> is kind of hard to browse through the Quran since it
> is on the right side of the program window which has a
> different user interface than the left side. Also I
> can take advantage of the parallel study option for
> the Tanakh but I can't do that for the Quran. For
> example, I can view the Hebrew Tanakh and the JPS
> English translation of the Tanakh in parallel study
> but I can't view the Quran and QuranShakir in parallel
> study since it is on the right program pane instead of
> the left program pane. Additionally the right program
> pane does not seem to support right alignment for
> right-to-left languages.

The problem you described is a problem with the way the interface is setup not 
with, the core of our software. Bibletime, one of our linux front ends, has 
the most advanced rendering support we have available. Is a little bit easier 
to use but doesn't have everything you want. However due to it's MDI 
interface, you can approximate it. Generally the reason that the bible 
translations are easier to parallel is that you are guaranteed (at least at 
for the moment with our current only using the KJV verse numbering scheme) 
that all the references will be the same. In bibletime, if you view two 
lexicons in parallel, the only "keys" that are available to you are the ones 
common to both. In general books this just simply isn't the case.

Here are some screen shots you can compare see what I'm talking about with

Using two windows to display parallel books (the left is the baptist faith and 
message 2000 with index tree shown, the right is a translation of Aquinas' 
SummaTheologica)

http://www.mathcs.concord.edu/~dev235/images/screenies/parallelbooks.png

A parallel bible display and a general book. notice that the bible display is 
slightly more powerful and also notice that since the interface is a MDI you 
can arrange the windows however you want (and have bibles open in multiple 
windows if you so desire)

http://www.mathcs.concord.edu/~dev235/images/screenies/bookandparallelbibles.png

And as for parallel lexicons to demonstrate how bibletime handles parallel 
display of books with different keys. I selected two modules an image sampler 
and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE). I did this because 
they would have entries (keys) in common, but not many as the ISBE is a large 
volume with many many entries, and the image sampler is just a test case or 
proof of concept module about embedding images and only contains a handfull 
of keys. If you will notice, the list of them combined is rather short. I 
think at least some some names were eliminated from both. 

http://www.mathcs.concord.edu/~dev235/images/screenies/parallellexicons.png

> Is there a way to make Quran and QuranShakir appear on
> the left program window pane just like Tanakh comes up
> in the left instead of the right program pane in order
> to take advantage of parallel study, better
> navigational features and right alignment for Arabic?
> Do I need to make a change in the Quran module to do
> that?

Well first off, general books are supported differently than the bibles. Their 
keys are almost always going to be different so this is going to make 
displaying them in parallel a gread deal harder. Also, I don't know the 
unicode support that is built into book support but I would imagine that it 
is the same as everywhere else, if the modules aren't displaying the text in 
a bidirectional manner properly, then I would guess that perhaps the module 
wasn't encoded properly to support it...or perhaps either your font or your 
operating system doesn't support bidirecitonal text properly.

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