SAB 6.2.2. Mac - RTL script- ChapterVerseSequence in footnote displays VerseChapter but in fact goes to / chooses ChapterVerse (problem reformulated)

Scripture App Builder
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ScreenshotSAB-crossref-RTL
ScreenshotSAB-crossref-RTL.jpg1187×454 87.9 KB
We are not working in Paratext, but with FMP (FilemakerPro) but I think the problems are the same and I think this is a bug in the interpretation of RTL chapter and verse numbers in the footnote of an RTL App by SAB . I posted this before, but I see no improvement in 6.2.2 on this point. I think I did not explain clearly in the other post and therefore I try to explain the issue again and try to express myself more clearly.

I enclose a screenshot where you can see the same string of cross-references at v2, v3 and v4. You have to read the string starting at the right side. I will focus on the string of vs. 2.

PART A
In vs. 2 it reads as the first cross-reference Job 38:4 completely at the right side of the screenshot (visually from RTL you see: 38:4 boJ).
When you are IN the APP as a user this displays also as: 38:4 boJ (reading from the right to the left, (the reading direction).
In both cases in RTL this means ch. 4 vs. 38, while we must have Job ch. 38 vs.4.
So the display of chapter and verse is wrong in terms of what is left and right from the colon. The two elements should be reversed by SAB.

Then we continue and click on the cross-reference and expect according to what we see to go to Job 4:38, but NO, we are led in the NEXT pop-up screen to Job 38:4, visually and effectively, This is indeed the reference we intended to show to the user, but it is in contradiction with what the APP showed to the user in the first verse.
If we change the order of chapter and verse in FMP, the we get in the first pop-up:
4:38 boJ
but in the next pop-up it displays as:
38:4 boJ
and when we click it leads us to chapter 4, vs. 38, which is wrong.

In both cases SAB has a display in the 1st pop-up that is not in agreement with its display in the next screen and with its ultimate selection of the ch. and vs.

AS FAR AS I CAN SEE THIS IS A SERIOUS BUG for ALL RTL APPS!
It leads to many ineffective (dead) cross-references in the APP because these numbers are not correct.

PART B
This happens also in the \xo where we see \xo 2:1 …
In the APP when you click on the footnote marker in the text, it should display in the APP pop-up from RTL as:
2:1
(the number at the right side of the colon is the chapter number 1 of Gen. 1.
However it displays in the APP as 1:2. The chapter number 2 at the right side of the colon is of course wrong, it should be 1 because we are in chapter 1.

AS FAR AS I CAN SEE THIS IS A SERIOUS BUG for ALL RTL APPS!

If I am unclear in some way please let me now, but we urgently need a fix of this problem, otherwise we have to leave out all cross-references for our various RTL APPs because now they are a mess.

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@mcquayi: can you look at this?

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Hi Joop, I saw this a few days ago and flagged it for follow-up - just have been clearing some other things up but haven’t forgotten about you! The last time we talked this through the path forward as I remember it was that your colleague who was doing the converting was going to get the semicolon and RTL marks in the right order for SAB to handle it - what did they think of the research we had done into this?

The order we came up with that works for xrefs is

chapter number
\u200f RTL mark
\u003a colon
verse number

If your colleague can look at making them this way it could work - let me know that person’s thoughts on it. If they can’t do it in this way on the front side, I think the solution will be to do something to your text, a search and replace or perhaps with the Changes pane. In any case the best way is to get it on the front side conversion, but a back side conversion to the text might work. Let me know and let’s keep working on it.

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There are 2 RTL issues that are a problem:

A. the ref. consisting of ch. and verse number of the verse in the body text, where the cross-references are related to, are reversed in the 1st pop-up screen and again reversed in the next screen. When I change them in order from inside FileMakerPro (FMP, that is what we use instead of Paratext) again in the 2nd pop-up screen they are reversed and the user is led to the wrong chapter and verse. In other words if we see in the 1st screen a:b, then in the next screen we see b:a, and if it concerns 2 digits we see in the 1st. screen ab:cd and in the 2nd screen we see: cd:ab. This definitely is a bug . Is there a RTL APP around with cross-ref. which does NOT have this problem?

B. the next issue is the cross-references themselves. According to what I found, it seems they have the same problem, but I can only change their display when I type the ch and vs the wrong way. As it is now we type them in FMP in such a way that they display correctly for an ‘RTL script reader and also when I copy and paste them from FMP into a RTL word processor like Nisus, then they display correctly in Nisus, which I interpret in the sense that in FMP we are typing the text according to the standard for RTL word processing.

I am not sure, but it looks to me that the 2 problems are related. I think it is best to start to fix the bug under A and then see what happens with the behavior of the cross-references themselves.
While writing this, I realize that maybe Paratext somehow adds a RTL mark to the colon in case A and B … as Corey shows in this string…

chapter number
\u200f RTL mark
\u003a colon
verse number

then that could be an explanation but what makes it hard for me to accept this, is case A, because there you see first e.g ch:vs or you see vs:ch and then in the next screen after clicking on a reference, the screens displays ch and vs. just in the reverse order then the display before.

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Hi Joop -

Is your teammate there looking at how to tweak his import process or are you working with stable text (in other words that doesn’t get re-imported from time to time)? What did he make of the \u200f RTL mark followed by \u003a colon solution? We saw in the example we worked on earlier that the cross-references formatted like that do work in apps made with SAB, so the solution to these is going to be reformatting those cross-references in your text - hopefully by programmatic means, not by hand.

Let me take a look at what you have in your source - send me a link to your project in a personal message and I’ll take a look at it.

Corey

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I had to place an RTL marker after a colon, after an arabic comma and after a hyphen to get the cross-references display right and I put an extra bookabbreviation wherever multiple chapters of one book are found without each having its own book abbreviation.

Under features I have the colon for ch / vs separation and up-down comma (the arabic comma) for separation between multiple verses.

This way I can at least lead the users to the right chapter and they are very near to their verse, just scroll down to it, not a big problem.

BUT technically speaking to me it seems a bug that users are not lead to the VERSE EXACTLY … which in my LTR versions always happens.

AND it still feels awkward nobody is responding who has got all this working in RTL without similar problems… or is there anybody around who can link me to his APP made in SAB?

Anyway for the moment it is much better then it was, but we are not yet where we should be!