[sword-devel] Website - module lists

[Chris Little]

Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> Language:af means little - Africaans would be nicer. How can I get there?

See http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/download.asp

The official ISO 639-3 to English list is there under Language Names Index.

I know that GS has a localized equivalent to this, but I'm not sure 
where it came from.

(I don't recommend copying the value given for "grc" though, since it is 
technically incorrect as "grc" means Ancient Greek, not Koine, and it is 
incorrect in the case of an increasing set of modules, e.g. the LXX, 
which is not in Koine Greek. More broadly, I wouldn't recommend using 
localized values for what are L2-languages only. No one speaks native 
Ancient Greek, so why localize it to a less-familiar form? No one speaks 
native Latin, so why localize it to "lingua latina"? Etc. Hebrew is a 
problematic case since "he" represents both modern and Biblical Hebrew. 
We should probably look for/add a subtag to differentiate the two.)

I think we should also push a language tag lookup mechanism/database 
back into libsword so that this data is exposed to all users, assuming 
it isn't already present in ICU. This probably isn't the first time this 
has been proposed.

> the little info button is irrelevant as if the name is highlighted as a
> link it is obvious where to get info. So I will drop that.

I'm not sure that's true. I would assume (as a naive user who had never 
been to the site before) that clicking on the name of the module would 
start a download (in spite of the presence of the 3 download buttons).

> I never liked the internal module names as a presentation item, i think
> the short description is much more useful for that. I think i would want
> to drop the internal module name.

While we should present an abbreviate (short form) name, we should also 
still make clear what the actual module name is. So I strongly suggest 
not dropping the internal module name.

> But there is more:
> 
> What navigation would be efficient, robust and would bypass scrolling to
> an ever expanding list?
> 
> I am sure most frontend developers have the same problem.
> 
> I am wondering about two drop downs - language and category
> 
> If you choose nothing you get all
> 
> If you choose English you get all English
> 
> if you choose English and Bible you get only English Bibles
> 
> Has anyone a better idea?

Sounds good, but it will need to build itself based on the modules 
present on the server. That includes needing to build the language list 
based on installed modules. In other words, I don't want to have to go 
in and add new languages to a JSP every time I upload a module that 
implements a new language. *AND* The language lists need to be 
repository-specific. So, the public list should not show languages only 
present in beta modules (and vice versa).

--Chris