Hi,<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 7:46 AM, Kahunapule Michael Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kahunapule@mpj.cx">kahunapule@mpj.cx</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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On 03/06/2012 04:12 PM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 6:17 AM,
Kahunapule Michael Johnson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kahunapule@mpj.cx" target="_blank">kahunapule@mpj.cx</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
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<div> On 03/06/2012 12:47 AM, Jonathan Morgan
wrote:
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<ol>
<li>You accurately preserve all of the original
text and punctuation (including quotation
punctuation) exactly as it was in the original
USFM. This involves the complete process from
module creation to display in all front ends.
This is an absolute requirement with respect to
the canonical text. If this condition isn't met,
then I don't have permission to convert these
Scriptures to Sword format, nor do you have such
permission.<br>
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I'm afraid I do not understand how either you or
CrossWire can ensure that *all* front ends display all
text correctly. I have no idea from your descriptions
whether BPBible or any other frontends would meet the
requirements currently. However, even if they did it
is conceivable that a new front end is created which
does not meet the requirements. Does this mean that
CrossWire immediately loses permission to distribute
the text for use in any of the front ends? (including
all the front ends that are compliant, of course).<br>
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That is a very good question-- one that I really don't want
to have to raise with the copyright owners!<br>
<br>
At a minimum, noncompliant front ends may not use the texts
if they cannot do so without corrupting them.<br>
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A couple of things:<br>
1. Non-compliant frontends do not use the text: users do.<br>
2. Non-compliant frontends do not distribute modules:
CrossWire (or some other organisation) does.<br>
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Blame-shifting is not productive. Quality control at all stages in
the complete system from Bible translator to user is productive.</div></blockquote><div><br>I'm sorry, but I'm not blame-shifting. I'm suggesting copyright is the wrong tool to use to enforce such claims, since I can't see that it will actually target the one responsible for the wrong. I agree quality control is a great thing to have. I disagree that wide-ranging and not readily enforceable copyright claims will achieve it.<br>
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I'm not talking about getting all of the formatting correct.
I'm just talking about exactly preserving all text and
punctuation of the canonical text. If a front end cannot do
that, it should be withdrawn from public distribution, as it
is clearly a threat to our ability to distribute Scriptures.
Actually, there is a greater threat that copyrights: the
fear of God. I wouldn't want to be caught dead or alive
corrupting the Holy Bible. I would think that you wouldn't,
either. It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of God
when He is angry.<br>
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All of this assumes knowledge of errors. Unless you manually
test every verse of every Bible in every frontend, some could
display a result different from what you expected. I know
that at different times I have seen some unusual bugs.<br>
A few (real world) cases:<br>
1. A bug in BPBible meant that when Strong's Numbers were
displayed, some verses in the Chinese would not display.<br>
2. A bug in encoding meant opening a Bible to a particular
chapter would raise an error message.<br>
3. Incorrect font usage meant that the text displayed
completely wrongly.<br>
<br>
When these bugs are encountered and reported, we will fix
them, but I cannot write (consistently) bug-free code and I
don't think I've ever met a developer who can. Certainly a
fairly high percentage of the module rendering errors that are
reported to me in BPBible are caused by modules I had never
used (often in languages I did not know), and where for
whatever reason my assumptions were wrong.<br>
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I understand the limitations of imperfect human programmers. What I
expect is that:<br>
<ul>
<li>Each part of the whole Bible study software system from
translation to module creation to back end development to front
end display is carefully designed to correctly handle Bible
texts without corruption.</li>
<li>Reasonable care is taken by everyone involved to ensure that
the implementations are correct.</li>
<li>Reasonable testing is done.</li>
<li>High priority is given to correcting any problems that result
in corruption of the text.</li>
</ul>
<p>This is not unreasonable, is it?<br></p></div></blockquote><div>No, I agree with you. However, my objection is that that is not what a copyright based requirement seemed to be saying.<br><br>Two other things that occurred to me:<br>
1. If your module uses a versification other than KJV, BPBible won't support it right now. Other frontends may also not support it. That will not show all the text of the module.<br><br>2. If your module used a RtoL script, BPBible didn't support it until 0.5 late last year. Other frontends may also not support it. That may not show all the text of the module accurately.<br>
<br>In both of these cases, I would argue that BPBible was actually behaving reasonably in the presence of technical limitations. While there exists a large subset of modules which are supported and supported well by BPBible, it is a useful presence. The idea of stopping the text being available in other frontends because of BPBible limitations seems very suspect to me.<br>
<br>Jon<br></div></div>