Possibility of different main titles (\mt1/2) for intro and chapter 1?

Scripture App Builder
1

When a book has an introduction, the main title(s) marked by \mt1/2 at the beginning of the book are repeated at the beginning of chapter 1. This is a good thing.

But I have a situation where there is one introduction for all three books of John. Ideally I would have a general title “The Letters of John” before the introduction, but the title at the beginning of chapter 1 of 1JN would say “First Letter of John”. Is there any way to make that happen?

I tried putting new \mt1/2 markers before \c 1, but that just put those titles at the end of the intro, and the chapter 1 titles were still the original titles.

I tried putting new \mt1/2 markers after \c 1, but that made no change - they were just ignored.

I would be happy for a workaround that requires modifiying the Paratext text file…

2

@jeff_heath there is a \mte# marker, but I have not tested it for your situation. Though useful for typesetting a title after the introduction.

There is also \ms# which seems to fit here. It is mainly used in Psalms. That should work.

Though I am not sure what you want exactly. Are you happy with the \mt1 being repeated at the top of Chapter 1, if it is followed by what is in \ms1?

\id
\mt1 The Letters of John
\is 
\ip
\c 
\ms1 First Letter of John
3

It would be preferable if it isn’t there, because it would then be different than the second and third letters, which wouldn’t have that \mt1 repeated.

4

So here is what I have at the top of the 1TH intro (Letters to Thessalonians, from Paul’s letters):

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If I add \mte1 and \mte2 at the beginning of chapter one, this is what I get there:

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So the main title repeats, and then it gives me the specific title (The first letter to Thessalonians, from Paul’s letters). Obviously I could remove the repeated phrase, but that specific title formulation is what I have at the beginning of 2TH:

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image720×665 146 KB

Note that the \mte1 and \mte2 in this case are added AFTER the \c 1 marker. If I put them before the chapter marker, those titles show up at the end of the introduction, where they don’t do anybody any good…

5

Well, I have managed to morph the titles so that they would work in this particular case, but it was a lot of work, and the titles are now different than they are in the printed Bible.

I would like to propose a change to SAB. Yes, normally you want the titles that appear before the introduction to be repeated before the beginning of chapter 1. But there are a few cases where it would be better to have different titles. I propose that if there are new \mt1/2 markers immediately after \c 1 that those markers define the titles that will appear at the beginning of the chapter, replacing the titles that appeared before the introduction. This would allow me to have consistent titles at the beginning of chapter 1 of 1TH and 2TH.

Just to review, what I have at the beginning of 2TH is:

\mt1 The Second Letter to Thessalonica
\mt2 from the Letters of the Prophet Paul

And there is no introduction on 2TH. The introduction before 1TH serves for both letters. So the title before that introduction (at the beginning of 1TH) is:

\mt1 Letters to Thessalonica
\mt2 from the Letters of the Prophet Paul

And what I would like at the beginning of chapter 1 of 1TH is this, to be parallel with the beginning of 2TH:

\mt1 The First Letter to Thessalonica
\mt2 from the Letters of the Prophet Paul

But SAB forces the titles that were before the introduction to be repeated before chapter 1. So the best I could do with that title would be this:

\mt1 Letters to Thessalonica
\mt2 from the Letters of the Prophet Paul
\c 1
\mte2 The First Letter

Putting the \mte2 after \c 1 makes it show up, but then it isn’t parallel to the title in 2TH. I had to completely rework the titles to be:

1TH
\mt1 Letters from Paul to Thessalonica
\c 1
\mte2 The First Letter

2TH
\mt1 Letters from Paul to Thessalonica
\mt2 The Second Letter

This isn’t too bad - the titles at the beginning of chapter 1 are parallel, and we have the simple “Letters from Paul to Thessalonica” as a title before the (joint) introduction. But it forces me to be different than the printed Bible, which is unfortunate.

Thanks for considering this change.

6

@jeff_heath If you have a proposal it is best put in a new post as a feature request.

We are trying to support USFM schema. It only allows one \mt1 per book, as I read it.

I’d prefer to add a settings

  1. ignore \mte# in header
  2. include \mte# on chapter one page and exclude \mt#

Currently \mte# is mainly used for Print books. But as you point out it is not helpful for SAB.

1 Like
7

Posted as feature request…
https://community.scripture.software.sil.org/t/ability-to-override-book-introduction-titles-in-chapter-1/2182

1 Like
8

I just was struggling with the same issue, and found this request from a couple of years ago. I’ve voted for the feature request.

In my case, I wanted one of the \mt markers (\mt1) to fall before the intro, and the other (\mt2) to fall before ch.1 At first the only results I was getting is that they both occurred in both positions.

My final solution was use Changes to change the \mt1 marker to \imt1 and the \mt2 marker to \mte. The \imt and \mte markers fall in only one location or the other, which is the behavior I was looking for.