[sword-devel] SWORD link, and other misc. comments

[DM Smith]

On Feb 4, 2007, at 4:18 AM, Chris Little wrote:

> Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
>
>> I thought we left the OSIS specification to say that osisRef  
>> defaulted
>> to Bible.KJV if no prefix was specified in the osisRef and no
>> osisRefWork was defined.  We tried to steer OSIS as much as we  
>> could to
>> match how SWORD operates in areas we felt SWORD has already  
>> flushed out
>> reasonable behavior over the years.
>
> Actually, it was Bible.NRSVA. But that's 99.9% identical to a KJV +
> Apocrypha.

I can't comment on what was decided at the OSIS meetings, but the  
current manual says:

"Appendix K.1 Prefix: (optional)
Note that if you omit the prefix on an osisRef, it is optional  
afterall, your reference can only point to another location in the  
OSIS text where you are inserting the osisRef. This is the equivalent  
of the osisID without a prefix, it defaults to the text that you are  
working in at the moment."


This may be an error/inconsistency in the documentation, as there is  
the osisRefWork, which in every example in the manual has it as  
"Bible" or "bible", which is described as follows:

"Every osisText element specifies what reference or versification  
scheme any osisRefs within it refer to. This may or may not be the  
same work."

There is a deprecation of the osisRefWork in favor of a new mechanism  
workPrefix, which allows one to associate specific paths with a  
workID. However, it is, in my opionion, an unnecessary complication  
for this discussion.

I think that the core behavior that needs to be added is the  
distinction between internal and external references. I don't know  
that we need a robust external reference system.

One or the other needs to have a prefix. Currently Sword only  
supports Bible links and probably the majority of links in a Bible  
are blblical, as well as the links in a commentary. From a  
minimization of storage and the preseveration of current behavior, it  
makes sense to presume a default biblical osisWorkRef.

The question then is what do we use for self references in a non-Bible?

The immediately obvious answer is to use the [name] of the module.

The workID mechanism of OSIS requires that every prefix in a work be  
declared in the document's header. This is a mapping of a symbolic  
name to another work or the same work. From what I can tell, we could  
give the workIDs non-sensical values, such as "xyz" or "doesNotMatter".

With this we could declare a workID of "self" for the osisRefs  
pointing to self. (Or any other good value.)

The question is then "Does this paint us into a corner, if we ever  
decide to have a general reference system?" In such a case where we  
need to refer to a specific external work, we would need to add  
support for other prefixes.
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