[sword-devel] Adding abbreviated names to the module conf file (was Re: isalnum(3) for i18n)

[Daniel Owens]

Chris Little wrote:
> Daniel Owens wrote:
>> - The default should not necessarily be English. This is what Chris is 
>> suggesting. The default display ought to be in the language that the 
>> module developer decides (usually the language of that module, except 
>> in the case of ancient texts, in which case probably English should be 
>> the default).
> 
> My recommendation was actually that the default be the language of the 
> module (what I have referred to, perhaps somewhat confusingly, as the 
> localized name). In the absence of that, I recommended using the 
> English. For old (all existing) content, the fallback would be the 
> current combination of localized plus English that is found in most 
> modules.
> 
> For ancient languages, I would recommend simply using the "English" (or 
> more generally Latin/Latin-script) form.
> 
>  > One further item I would like to propose is an Author field. This is not
>> so important for Bibles (and maybe for most dictionaries), but for 
>> most books the author is a major factor in whether one uses it or not 
>> (way more important than title). It could be argued that the author 
>> ought to be in the Description or About, but if front-ends in the 
>> future want to enable users to sort the books in their library by 
>> author, title, subject, etc., then there needs to be a field for that. 
>> It also facilitates bibliographic citation for students and scholars. 
>> The more books are added, the more important this becomes. And it also 
>> ought to be localizable (I'm thinking especially of Chinese authors). 
>> A Publisher field could be useful too, but that usually is given in 
>> the About field, so I wouldn't push for it as long as the full 
>> bibliographic information is there somewhere.
> 
> I think an Author field is a great idea. We'll probably also want a 
> Translator field. I believe Publisher /might/ be covered by one of the 
> Copyright lines, but I can't check the .conf standard in the Wiki ATM.
> 
> I don't think this needs to be localizable. Rather we should just keep 
> names in a standard form. There are cases where an author's name is 
> different in different languages, but they are relatively few. More 
> significant are the case where an author's name is transliterated. We 
> could do "Author" and "LatnAuthor" fields for the native script form and 
> Latin transliterated form respectively, but it might be just as sensible 
> to put the Latin transliteration in parentheses following its native 
> script form.
> 
> I think we should also keep things in standard sorting order of family 
> name followed by given name.
> 
> So, by way of example, considering first a Latin-script name, then a 
> non-Latin-script name:
> 
> Author=Luther, Martin
> 
> Author=倪柝聲 (Nee, Watchman)
> 
> OR
> 
> Author=倪柝聲
> LatnAuthor=Nee, Watchman

Sounds good to me!

> 
> For multiple authors, we can simply use commas and 'and' (or its 
> module-locale appropriate translation).
> 
> --Chris
> 
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