I think this is not difficult per se, but it should be properly encoded.
<w> seems correct, using zero with characters seems not correct.
Peter
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From: sword-devel <sword-devel-boun...@crosswire.org> on behalf of David Haslam <dfh...@protonmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2025 11:30 am
To: sword-devel mailing list <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Cc: David Haslam <df.has...@btinternet.com>
Subject: [sword-devel] Proposal for a new SWORD filter to display word dividers
Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2025 11:30 am
To: sword-devel mailing list <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Cc: David Haslam <df.has...@btinternet.com>
Subject: [sword-devel] Proposal for a new SWORD filter to display word dividers
I wish to propose that we design in a new SWORD filter.
The conf key would be:
The conf key would be:
- GlobalOptionFilter=ShowWordDividers
In the writing systems for the various languages of SE Asia (Thai, Khmer, Lao, Myanmar) there is [generally] no space between words.
In this respect, they are like many European languages before the start of silent reading. The descriptive term is Scriptura Continua.
Some Bible translations for this region are already making use of one of the ZERO WIDTH characters to invisibly mark the divisions between lexical words.
Options include:
- U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE
- U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER
- U+FEFF ZERO WIDTH NO BREAK SPACE
They exclude:
- U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER
A further possibility, even without requiring a full study Bible with Strong's, etc, is to simply wrap each lexical word within the OSIS w element.
One without any OSIS attributes would suffice for this purpose. Likewise, for the seg element.
My proposal is that we design a feature to show/hide word dividers by displaying them using a suitable visible but non-intrusive character.
My suggestion is to use this Unicode character by default:
- U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT
We could even allow the actual visible character to be specified in a second conf key, thus:
- VisibleWordDivider=U+00B7
Benefits would include:
- Helps with language learning to know where lexical words start and end
- Helps with front-end search for whole words, exact phrase or all words
- Helps with checking the accuracy of Bible translations by clearly displaying lexical word boundaries at the touch of a single key in the front-end
- Paves the way for Study Bible with the addition of Strong's mark-up, etc.
Here's a sample of Khmer verse text with the MIDDLE DOT as the visible word divider:
Obad.1.1
cf. Here's what it looks like with the ZWSP as the invisible word divider:
Obad.1.1
If SWORD developers agree that my proposal merits consideration, please would you start on the software development.
Best regards,
David
David
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