On 05/20/2010 05:35 PM, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
DM Smith<[email protected]>  writes:
This could also be<note n="y" type="crossReference">Cited from
<reference osisRef="Exod.21.24 Lev.24.20 Deut.19.21">Exodus 21:24,
Leviticus 24:20 and Deuteronomy 19:21</reference></note>
Seriously -- free form inside the osisRef, without even commas or
semicolons to separate items?
The form in the osisRef is defined by a regular expression. They are not free form. The basic form of an osisID is b, b.c or b.c.v, where b is from a predefined list and b/c are numbers.
An osisRef is either:
    osisID (that is a single reference)
    osisID-osisID (that is a range, where both sides are fully qualified)
    or
    osisRef osisRef (a space separate list of osisRefs)
Note, in OSIS it is invalid to separate them with anything but spaces.

Seriously. ;)
I'd like to see<scriptRef>  have the passage or osisRef
attribute. Preferably the latter as the content is not made of
arbitrary/inconsistent book names and has a well defined syntax.
Without the attribute, JSword has to parse the body of the reference,
assuming that it is something that can be parsed.
On the one hand, as a computer scientist with graduate degrees and a
thesis, I appreciate the value of a regularized syntax.

On the other hand, people taking notes in their Bible studies, pastors
writing sermons to preach, and regular folks emailing random BCV
references to their friends will never use such a syntax.  Never.
Agreed.

We write software to accommodate those kinds of people in their work.
There will never come a time when parsing free-form BCV refs goes away.
Very true.

I sense that the coding to make ParseVerseList work well must have been
very tough, but it is one of the nicest, most easy-to-get-along-with parts
of the engine.  Feed it darn near any string that is at least remotely
BCV-like, and it comes back with something sensible.  It makes very few
mistakes, that I've seen; there is rather little ambiguity, Jude -vs-
Judges notwithstanding.
Yes it is very good!

Rigid syntax is for people who want to live in the guts of things, not for
people who use those things.  Computers should work for people, not the
other way around.

I don't see your point. I thought your original question was how a module should be encoded, not how people should input a reference list.

In Him,
    DM



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