Export Biblical Passages From Paratext to PDF

Question

Hi Friends,

I have a list of Scripture references tagged as follows (this is justified right in Ptxt, mind you, which is why the tag is far right - that’s where the line starts):

(6:ISA 53)1$ nb\

Eventually I wish to export my list (from SAB – Sharif Arabic Bible) to PDF. When I run a trial export of the above tagged reference to PDF, the Arabic properly justifies right and it correctly provides the text in question (Isa 53:6). However (and very strangely), it identifies the passage as ‘The Book of Isaiah. 6:53’ (with the final period after Isaiah and not at the end of the reference, as I wish.

There are a couple of other items, but I’m guessing there has to be a place where all the features to be exported are identified and set. Where might that be?

anon303076 (SAB)

Answer 1

More clearly, my two lines are

6:ISA 53 ref
(6:ISA 53)1$ nb\

The nb\ provides that the reference follows the text with ‘no breaks’.

Still – The text is right (it exports ISA 53:6), but it identifies the reference as ISA 6:53. If I switch ‘53’ with ‘6’ in the ‘no breaks’ line (thinking I’ll get the corrected ch - v order that way):

(53:ISA 6)1$ nb\

…I get just the text exported; no reference given at all.

Comments

Bible Module question, to be specific.

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I’m guessing my problems are related to exporting in Arabic in RTL.

So strange (Bible Module for SAB).

(6:ISA 53)$ nb\ gets exported in Arabic as: Isaiah 6:53

No parentheses. OK.

If I remove the $ sign only - (6:ISA 53) nb\ - it gets exported as: )Isaiah 53:6)

One parenthesis turns upon export. Book name present and the ch and v order are now correct (in my RTL environment).

If I turn the parenthesis around in Ptxt - (6:ISA 53( nb\ - it gets exported as: (53:6).

Ch and v order are correct (in the Arabic’s RTL). Parentheses right. But no book title!

Love it!
anon303076

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RTL scripts can be challenging. To make verse refs appear correctly Paratext adds ‎200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK before colons and hyphens in verse references. This happens automatically and pretty much invisibly. However I am not sure how well it works in modular books.

I would recommend that you create your modular book scripts with RTL direction turned off. (CTRL-L Uncheck Right to Left Script).Once you have created the correct tags Try testing it in LTR mode and then changing text direction.

Answer 2

I’m not familiar with the specific export process you are using. Can you give more details?

It seems that you are making changes to your text. Can you give details on what you have and what you want to produce? Unicode has various Right-to-left and Left-to-right characters that could possibly be added to the text to control what is output.

Answer 3

Thank you all.

Also, I noticed that when Ptxt grabs a verse or two, it grabs it as is, punctuation and all. This sometimes mean you’ll get a verse that contains opening quotation marks but not closing marks - which is unacceptable. I’d want to close that with an elipsis and closing quotation marks. But I can’t edit the biblical text! So I end up having to export to RTF where I can edit.

anon303076

Comments

The bible module tool does have a marker that is used to replace text. For instance, if the text ends with: the way, the truth and the life.

and you want to end it with elipsis and quotation marks you would use the \rep marker

\rep life.=>life...”

Note that you need to pay attention to spaces.

Search help for "What is the specification for a Bible module?" for more help on this.