Dear all,
These comments are a mix of background, history, and thoughts:
1) VERSIFICATION (v11n):
Variation between reference systems sucks. Until you get into the
weeds of the details, it is normal to assume the problems are not
complex. SWORD tries to implement a simple 90% solution.
SWORD and JSword support defined abstract versification schemes
with 3 simple dimensions: [bookid : chapterMax][chapterNumber :
verseMax][verseNumber : verseEntry]
Conceptually we also operate on these assumptions (I've skimmed
the proposal by Arnaud which differs here, but I haven't given it
the thought it deserves to comment yet): that book order is
defined in the v11n system; that chapter and verse numbers are
numeric and begin at 1 and increase to verseMax. We also allocate
a special slot '0' for: Module Introduction; Testament
Introduction; Book Introduction; and Chapter Introduction (e.g.,
Matt.0.0 can hold an introduction to Matthew).
Those who have been exposed to many Bibles will immediately think
of places these assumption fall short. But for >90% of our
Bibles, these assumption hold true, and these assumption make many
aspects of our work much simpler (abstract parsing of verse lists
and ranges, bookmark ordering, etc.).
Historically, SWORD previously supported dynamic, per module,
versification, with a 3 phase lookup:
index file .bks[book number] = book offset in next index;
index file .cps[book offset + chapter number] = chapter offset in
next index;
index file .vss[chapter offset + verse number] = verse offset and
entry size in data file.
20 years or so, we made the decision to begin the hard work to
understand versification systems within Bibles so we could begin
to map them appropriately. This let us remove the .bks, and .cps
index files and store that data in versification system
definitions, leaving only the final .vss index file which gave the
offsets and entry sizes into the data file.
Caring about versifications was a decision we made. Our previous
design let any Bible decide how many books, how many chapters, and
how many verses each chapter contained. This had its merits
because any new versification could be defined in each module
without anyone caring what it was. But the drawback was the same:
any Bible could decide how many books, how many chapters, and how
many verses without anyone knowing why or what they were.
Some have pushed for dynamic definitions of v11n systems again,
and I understand why. I am in favor of moving forward with a
hybrid approach: a set of defined versification systems, which a
module will still need to choose from, to which it most closely
adheres, + the ability for that module to specify its variation.
Toward 98%: We have tried to work around the cons of this simple
design and approach 100% support by accounting for the most common
types of problems, e.g.
* The engine allows common verse suffixes (e.g. Matt.2.7b);
* The engine skips verses in a Bible which are not present--
this allows us to create v11n schemes which are a superset of
n number of closely related v11n schemes, knowing that the
engine will skip over the verses that are not present in the
module; We also have tools which print out missing verses
which has proven a good QA check for our modules team.
* When we run across a Bible which adds an odd verse here or
there or an out of order verse, our workaround has been to
append these to end of the verse just before where they should
appear, so the text flows the same as the printed Bible, and
we include for the reader an inline visual separator and
marker showing the publisher's verse number.
These work arounds get us pretty close to being able to support
98% of our Bibles exactly as the publisher wishes, and the
remaining 2% is supported "well enough" for no complaints by
publishers. Could we build a system which allowed out of order
verses, or which allowed any scheme a Bible wished to follow?
Sure, but the added complexity for various tasks increases quite a
bit for some of these allowances-- e.g., think index math for book
chapter verse when we cannot assume numeric sequence; think
abstract ordering of bookmarks not tied to any specific Bible,
search results across Bibles, etc.
Our vision with v11n definitions is that they will be a few as
possible allowing us to map between them most easily; and as many
as necessary to allow us to represent well enough a published work.
Chris Little previously was our versification pumpkin holder and
did some amazing work researching all this material. As a
demonstration of his thorough work and an example of the
difficulties with v11n, see his work on just the LXX tradition:
https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword-tools/trunk/versification/lxx_v11ns/
Chris has left our community after many years of volunteering
massive time and effort.
We haven't had anyone step up who is willing to commit the time
and effort necessary and who holds our vision (as few as possible,
as many as necessary).
2) MAPPINGS:
SWORD and JSword support v11n to v11n mappings. Graciously, Костя
Маслюк worked with us for over a year to discuss the problems and
implement a versification mapping system which has been included
in the engine. He also added v11n mappings for systems he was
interested in supporting. If anyone is interesting in the
discussions, they can see the archives, e.g.,
https://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2013-July/040154.html
Historically, we called this topic alternate versification, so if
you see "av11n" in the archives, you'll be aware.
Registering v11n systems and mappings in the engine is
straightforward in our versification manager, and as you can see,
loading these dynamically from a file would be simple to implement:
https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/src/mgr/versificationmgr.cpp
During the development of the mapping infrastructure, our proof of
concept was to see if we could concisely build a parallel Bible
HTML display across versification systems, letting a user specify
any number of Bibles, the first Bible v11n being the primary
ordering driver:
https://www.crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/examples/tasks/parallelBibles.cpp
____
So, now to the issue with adding another Catholic versification
system. I would love to continue to delegate ownership of v11n
decisions! I trusted Chris. He said "no" all the time, and only
allowed new versification definitions if we really couldn't
support a set of Bibles using an existing system with our work
arounds. He spent the time necessary to understand the
traditions, which published works would use the proposed
versification, he had excellent skills clearly delineating
systems-- generally he made well informed decisions from many
hours of research.
I don't understand the complex details nor have the time to do the
research for each individual request. My first thought is, where
is Chris?! Next, my uninformed mind thinks: we have v11n
definitions "Catholic" and "Catholic2"! Why do we need an
additional Catholic versification system? Did we do a bad job with
the first two? Can we not follow our principles and create a
superset between 2 or more of these? And of course, these are not
proper responses.
So, if anyone is prayfully willing to take up this pumpkin-- to
put in the time necessary to research Bible traditions and
published works, to truly understands both the pros and cons of
the decisions we've made to go down the path we are on, along with
our workarounds for the cons, and is willing to live
wholeheartedly with where we are now, but certainly always open to
improve, I would love for that person to take ownership of
versification.
I appreciate the pointers to the Paratext v11ns and mappings,
maybe we compare where we are now with what they have.
Thank you all for being zealous to improve things. Looking
forward the conversation to follow,
Troy
On 1/26/24 06:10, Arnaud Vié wrote:
Hello everyone,
I'm the person Cyrille mentioned, and I just joined the mailing
list as I thought I could maybe explain a bit more what I'm
trying to do with this new versification.
*1. Problem statement*
Simply put, my objective is to be able to align verse-by-verse
the contents of two bibles that use different versifications.
For example :
- I open Daniel 3 in a Catholic bible, it has 100 verses because
the Prayer of Azariah is included.
- I want to compare the translation verse by verse with, for
example, the KJVA. This means I want to see the Daniel 3 from
KJVA, with all verses from PrAzar included in the corresponding
place.
There was already logic to perform such mapping in jsword, and I
recently included it to support deuterocanonical contents (on the
AndBible fork, since that's the only one where I got answers from
the maintainer) : https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/pull/13
Now, the problem is to be able to do the same with the
deuterocanonical additions to the book of Esther, because there
are many different "strategies" adopted by different bibles.
- Protestant bibles, when they have it, usually have it a
separate books (AddEsth in KJVA).
- Some catholic bibles have it as additional chapters at the end
of Esther, making Esther 16 chapters long : that's the existing
"Catholic2" versification, which maps to KJVA easily :
https://github.com/AndBible/jsword/blob/develop/src/main/resources/org/crosswire/jsword/versification/Catholic2.properties#L392
- Most catholic bibles actually have the additions integrated
directly within the original text, using lettered verse numbers
(13A, 13B, etc., see here for example :
https://www.aelf.org/bible/Est/3 )
Currently, these catholic bible with the text integrated use the
"Catholic" versification, and ignore all the lettered verses (or
include the letters as raw text) : basically, Esther 3.13 with
these additions becomes one single very long verse. This makes it
impossible to map properly with the AddEsth of KJVA.
*2. Proposed solution (Catholic3 versification)*
With the proposed Catholic3 versification (except it needs a few
adjustments compared to the file proposed by Cyrille), what I'd
like to achieve is to give a unique verse number to each of those.
For example, Esther 3 goes from 15 to 22 verses, with the OSIS
IDs becoming :
- Esth.3.13 for verse 13
- Esth.3.14 for verse 13A...
- Esth.3.20 for verse 13G
- Esth.3.21 for verse 14
(Basically, the OSIS ID identifies the position of the verse; the
actual numbering from the bible can be preserved separately with
the OSIS "n" attribute or the "\vp" USFM keyword.)
would your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h was
modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23,
22, 47, 29,
14, 10, 41, 32, 14?
Since my objective is to allow mapping verse by verse, you'll
understand that I need the verse counts to be aligned with the
actual usage. Having the "versification" allow more verses than
what's actually used defeats the purpose.
In addition, I believe it's a very bad idea to make big changes
to already published versifications : the point of versifications
is to give a unique ID to a verse. Updating a versification will
change all IDs for the verses of already existing bibles that use
this versification.
I really believe the best solution for the time being is to
create a new Catholic3 versification, as originally suggested.
I can provide the full definition very soon (though since I'm
working with JSword it will be in Java format first), and it
should in theory be aligned with Catholic and Catholic2 except
for these differences in Esther. (I'll check if there are more
differences I missed).
*3. Modular versifications*
I think at some point it would be nice to have per-book
versifications
or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a
"standard"
versification
Agreed.
If everyone is open to the idea, I'd like to work in the next few
months on an extension of the OSIS standard to define "modular"
versifications, ie. versifications that can be built by composing
other versifications and applying a diff.
Then each bible could, in its document header, not only reference
a standard versification with refSystem, but include its own
specific changes and how they map to the standard.
Before I spend time on the topic though, is there anyone in
particular I should ask to approve the general idea, and who
would be interested in reviewing proposals on the topic ?
Thanks all and best regards,
Arnaud
Le jeu. 25 janv. 2024 à 16:35, pinoaffe <pinoa...@gmail.com> a
écrit :
Hello,
I don't know much about catholic bibles or sword, but just out of
curiosity: would your use-case be served if canon_catholic.h was
modified to increase the verse counts in Esther to 39, 23,
22, 47, 29,
14, 10, 41, 32, 14? Or would the decreases in verse counts
in other
chapters of other books also be necessary?
And would such a change be acceptable to others?
The catholic bibles I've encountered "in the wild" are the dutch
Willibrordvertaling of 1975 and the neovulgate. Both of
these appear to
follow canon_catholic3.h everywhere except in Esther, where
they have 16
chapters
I think at some point it would be nice to have per-book
versifications
or some other way to deal with bibles that don't follow a
"standard"
versification, but for now we'll have to make do with what we got
Kind regards,
pinoaffe
Fr Cyrille <fr.cyri...@tiberiade.be> writes:
> Hello,
> Recently a person interested in the Catholic bible in
French told me
> about the mapping problems between Catholic versification
and the kjva
> concerning Esther. So I'm bringing up the question of a new
Catholic
> versification that could better deal with this kind of
problem and at
> the same time incorporate some of the errors in current
Catholic
> versifications. I should mention that two versifications
for French
> Bibles have been added since my proposal for a new Catholic
> versification, which was made long before these
versifications were
> added, and which was not favorably received at the time. In
our case,
> the number of Bibles that follow this versification is simply
> enormous, since the majority of Catholic Bibles do. I would
also add
> that the LXX versification is not entirely correct. There
are no LXX
> today that put 16 chapters to Esther. Ralph's already uses
letters to
> integrate Greek passages into the text.
> In fact, Catholic versification simply follows Ralph's. So
I suggest
> that we seriously reopen this question with concrete
suggestions.
> For my part, the suggestion is simple: convert the numbers
in the
> Greek passages into verses and offset the numbered verses
in the same
> chapters. I'll copy you on what that might look like.
>
> Br Cyrille
>
> [2. text/x-chdr; canon_catholic3.h]...
>
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