[sword-devel] virtual modules

[DM Smith]

Greg Hellings wrote:
> Presumably that problem has already been solved because we have the 
> translations already.  The concept does seem a little far-out, 
> though.  It would be interesting to hear a more detailed version of 
> what exactly was being suggested for the virtual addition of the 
> Strong's Numbers.
It has only been solved only for the translations that have Strong's 
Numbers and that only partially. We do not retain the word order 
information from the Greek or Hebrew, when marking with Strong's Numbers.

Actually, I made several different suggestions based upon having 
Strong's Numbers. If we have the numbers in two modules then we can do 
some transitive work and tie the word(s) represented by one or more 
numbers from one translation to the next. (The quality of the 
computation depends upon the degree to which the two translations have 
the same ordering for Strong's numbers.) But if we only have them in a 
module other than the one that we are in, then we would not have the 
"word" order that Jonathan asks about. And we would not be able to do 
transitive work in a complete way.

Each Strong's Number ties to the Greek or to the Hebrew of the original. 
It does not tie directly to the specific word form (e.g. tense, 
singular/plural) but more to the root. So to search on the Strong's 
number is to search against a representation of the Greek or Hebrew, not 
the actual Greek or Hebrew. The results of the search can be displayed 
against any module.

The trick is to get the Strong's Numbers in the first place.

If we start with a particular verse, regardless of whether the module 
has Strong's Numbers or not, and look up all the Strong's Numbers for 
that verse we get a representation of that verse in the original 
language. Since this would be internal to the search and not presented 
to the user, it does not matter whether the list is sorted or not. Then 
presenting that list for a search against a lucene index, keyed on 
Strong's numbers, we can request a prioritized sorted search result of 
all top 'n' verses. The end result are verses which are similar in 
nature to the original.

This search could be done on a background thread and presented 
asynchronously as "Verses of Possible Interest".

Now, if we have Strong's Numbers in the module that we are searching, we 
can do a grab of all the words in that module which are tied to a 
particular Strong's number. This can then be presented to the user as a 
pick list of other ways that that word has been translated (often 
synonyms but not always) so that the user can find verses that use a 
particular translation of the Strong's Number.

It would also be possible to present to the user a list of other 
Strong's Numbers that are translated for the same native language word, 
e.g. love has different Strong's Numbers depending on context. This 
could be use to understand the translated word in context more fully.

Now if two modules are in the same language and are close to each other 
textually, but only one of them has Strong's numbers, we may be able to 
do a limited, transitive application of Strong's Numbers from one to the 
other using word diff between two verses. So to a limited extent, one 
could infer the ordering of some, maybe all of the Strong's numbers.

This could be used in any number of ways. It could be used as a first 
pass editing of the module without Strongs, to add strongs and "attach" 
the remaining ones as needing to be added.

This could be used to do an incomplete representation of some of the 
suggestions above.

So with this idea, a module would always have the ability to search 
against Strongs. And the module would either have a complete order 
representation of Strongs (i.e. it has the text tagged with them), or an 
incomplete, inferred order representation, or none at all.

If we have Strong's Numbers in two modules and the same ordering (or 
have ordering information present) for a given verse or the singular use 
of a Strong's Number in that verse, then we can say that it is 
translated one way in one module and another way in another. This could 
be even across languages.

If we had a complete Sword style glossary (Language A to Language B) for 
all the English words in a module tied to the Strong's Numbers, then we 
could do a very rough mechanical translation of the Bible into another 
language. (Probably there are better ways to do this. Such as was used 
for the Klingon Version.)

And these are only the ones I can think of.
>
> --Greg
>
> On 1/22/06, *Jonathon Blake* <jonathon.blake at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jonathon.blake at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     DM Smith wrote:
>
>     > How about adding Strong's numbers virtually?
>
>     One not so little issue:
>
>     Word order.  Different languages uses words that mean the same thing,
>     in a different sequence.   [ EG:  Subject  Object Verb, Subject Verb
>     Object, Object, Subject Verb ]
>
>     The same word in a language can be used for two or more Strong's
>     Numbers.
>     The same Strong's Number can be translated two or more different ways.
>
>     I do like the suggestion.  I just don't see how to solve that issue.
>
>     xan
>
>     jonathon
>     --
>     Ethical conduct is a vice.
>     Corrupt conduct is a virtue.
>
>     Motto of Nacarima.
>
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