Question on cross refs spanning chapters

Question

We would like to use the cross reference link-href attribute to create references like this:
\xt arbitrary text|MAT 1:2-3:7\xt*

Doing this causes References check errors, and so I have a few questions.

Is this even possible? If so, should I use a different hyphen or is there some other way of dealing with it.

Do apps like Scripture App Builder (and maybe YouVersion or other DBL products) know how to handle that? Would they create a popup with the correct span of verses across multiple chapters?

Answer 1

From the USFM specification, it looks like that should be a valid link-href attribute (it matches the regular expression). I think it’s a bug that Paratext is calling it an error.
Please use Help > Give feedback to send the issue to us so we can take a closer look.

Comments

Thank you. I’ve submitted it.

Answer 2

It works for us where we have specified a long hyphen (m-dash) for marking chapter spans, whereas we specified normal hyphens for verse spans. We also set up autocorrect to change - - into an m-dash, so these get entered easily and correctly.

Comments

Are you saying you’re using m-dashes in the link-href/attribute position? I know you can define that for parsing regular references, but I thought the reference that came after the | symbol had to be written using English-style references which couldn’t be changed in any way.

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mnjames:

I thought the reference that came after the | symbol had to be written using English-style references which couldn’t be changed in any way.

You are correct. A m-dash would not be accepted there since it must match the Regex:
[A-Z1-4]{3}(-[A-Z1-4]{3})? ?[a-z0-9\-:]*

Answer 3

The formatting for all references needs to follow the how they are setup under Project/Setting/Scripture Reference Settings. You can then determine what characters or spacing that you would want to use in the reference.

image666×623 17.7 KB

Answer 4

@anon554738, You are correct for the human-readable reference part, but for the link-href part specified as an attribute, it must conform to the regular expression I posted (see the Attributes section of the \xt marker specification).