Working on Abbott-Smith some things came together in my mind about
modules that mix languages. I have identified two problems.
First, modules that mix languages do not look good when fonts are chosen
per module rather than per language (regardless of the language of the
module). I go back and forth on which font to use as the default font in
SWORD frontends. If I am primarily using Greek lexicons, I use a Greek
font. If Hebrew lexicons then Hebrew. Cardo just does not satisfy, and
the SBL Biblit font is not out yet. But the <foreign> element *should*
mean that the front-end picks the right font for the right text, right?
I was (quietly) ecstatic to discover that BPBible also handles <foreign>
elements properly, displaying the proper fonts for each language in a
module (such as Abbott-Smith) that has five languages, using three
different fonts. So cool. But most front-ends do not. Is the <foreign>
element passed through the engine? If so, do I need to file bugs with
front-ends to encourage support of <foreign>?
Second, when RtoL text is mixed with LtoR text you can get some strange
display problems. Punctuation and numbers can work for both types of
languages. Take an example from the entry ἀγανάκτησις in Abbott-Smith.
It uses the aleph character, with a number 1 following. Just typing this
as plain text gives you: א1. This is incorrect even though the numeral
was typed after the letter. I found a solution in HTML using <bdo>. The
page at
http://www.textonline.org/files/abbott-smith/abbott-smith.current_release.html
properly handles this issue. It actually transforms raw TEI using XSL
with a CSS stylesheet to handle certain display issues. These
stylesheets can be found at
https://github.com/translatable-exegetical-tools/Abbott-Smith/tree/master/releases.
Could <bdo> be added to the filters to help with this problem?
Daniel
_______________________________________________
sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org
http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
