It appears that recently USFM tagging
completely ignores the return character in many places, and
validates only on the start of another tag.
Dear all,
With increasing pressure to get Bibles and even partial
Bibles onto mobile devices these days, there is lots of
interest in converting from Paratext/USFM files to other
formats.
Crosswire Bible Society have the Sword
Project which has its own binary format for Bible modules
which are readable by "
front-ends" on many operating systems,
including Windows, Linux, Android, etc. However, the current
Crosswire usfm2osis.py converter chokes on the following:
\id 1TH My test version \mt2
The first letter of Paul to the
\mt1 Corinthians
\c 1
\s Paul introduces himself
\p
\v 1 Hi there, I'm Paul.
In reading the USFM spec, I can't find confirmation that
markers like \mt2 MUST start on a new line. The closest that I
can see is:
Most paragraph or poetic
markers (like \p, \m, \q# etc.) can be followed immediately
by
a verse number (\v) on a new line.
All examples, however, do show these (what I call "newline
markers") on new lines.
However, I notice that the last few Paratext versions have a
tendency to pop some markers and their text up onto the end of
the previous line. I'm pretty sure that PT6 didn't do this. I
don't think this is an intentional feature, but seems to be
either a bug or some kind of weird side-effect. (It happens
often enough that I don't think the user can be blamed for it,
especially the way \c markers pop onto the previous line, but
of course because Paratext usually displays by chapter, the
user can't even see that without changing view mode.)
So anyway, I have a few questions:
- Do you agree that these types of markers (\mt2, \c, \q1)
should/must start on a new line?
- If so, would it be good to make that clear in the USFM
standard (or did I miss something)?
- Is having these markers pop up to the end of the
previous line a known bug in Paratext?
- Is there any way in Paratext to automatically fix this
in the USFM files?
- Does the Pathway code handle files like this better than
the Crosswire converter?
Thanks,
Robert.
