[sword-devel] NET bible

[DM Smith]

Greg Hellings wrote:
> I could almost swear that there is support in at least some front ends 
> already for linking from a <scripRef> entity.  Doesn't Bibletime 
> support that?  I thought that it was working this summer when I was 
> working with several ThML texts.  Maybe I was thinking of some one of 
> the prototype implementations we were working with.  Implementation in 
> the RTF-based BibleCS, though...?  I've never tried it.
In an earlier discussion on Strongs it was noted that Strongs often 
references other entries in its work, but that Sword did not support 
internal linking from one dictionary entry to another. I may have 
misunderstood, but based on this I doubt that there is support for links 
to anything but a Bible, Strongs or Robinsons.

According to http://www.ccel.org/ThML/ThML1.04.htm
<scripRef> is used for a reference to scripture and not a general 
purpose reference.

ThML uses <a> as an HTML anchor to other documents and also provides 
<sync type="" value=""> for cross-references. My guess is that support 
for these is limited. In the case of <a> the url would need to be 
decoded to understand it as a module reference, probably introducing a 
new protocol. In the case of sync the type attribute is unconstrained 
and essentially requires an application to interpret the value in its 
context (eg type=Strongs). I don't know if this has been defined as a 
module reference.

Turning to OSIS the possibilities are better. OSIS defines the 
<reference osisRef=""> element where the osisRef can refer to an 
external work. An osisRef contains a workid if it refers to another 
document. I don't know the level of support for this element, other than 
how JSword handles it.

At this time JSword assumes that the osisRef does not contain a workid 
and that it refers to a passage in the user's current working Bible. 
This is not proper usage, but we have not found situations in the 
available modules which have other kinds of references.

>
> --Greg
>
> On 2/8/06, *Barry Drake* <b.drake at ntlworld.com 
> <mailto:b.drake at ntlworld.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi there .........
>
>     Some of us are doing a feasibility study on the NET bible from
>     http://www.bible.org/ with a view to offering a Sword module.  The NET
>     bible comes with a massive set of footnotes.  In the present
>     incarnation
>     of Sword (certainly in the Windows front end) the use of such
>     extensive
>     footnoting would make the version difficult to follow.  There are
>     often
>     many footnotes in a single verse.
>
>     One solution, suggested I think by Chris Little was to make the front
>     end capable of displaying footnotes in a separate window from the
>     bible
>     text.  An alternative is to make the notes into a commentary module,
>     with the footnotes in the text neing represented by footnote numbers.
>     If this second alternative were considered, is it possible to link
>     these
>     footnote numbers to the commentary window?  What I'm looking for is
>     linking that looks up tags in commentaries like scripture references
>     embedded in a commentary - as an example - <scripRef>John
>     1:3</scripRef>
>     in a ThML tagged commentary.
>
>     Do we have provision for this in the filters?
>
>     God bless,
>
>     Barry
>