Bible dictionary format

I've written up a spec for this and put it on the Google Docs (under
History). Could people (probably Chris particularly) have a look and
confirm it makes sense and let me know any modifications you'd like?

Couple of admin things first: should I put generated content in
STEP-Hist or do we want to start a new box for this?

Also - are we using the dropbox or google docs as our primary repository
for docs now? (There's stuff in both.)

I'll hopefully have a first draft sample (based on the Easton
dictionary) available soon, then can start editting properly.

The specific questions which could do with answers soon (but I can
certainly get started without them) are:

1. Each article will (where appropriate) have one or more links to the
Bible, to the geographical database, and to the timeline. I'm intending
to arrange it so the most important is given first, so we have a default
for display. Can we make use of more than one? (At least some drafts
I've seen propose a drop-down, or a box with them in.) My intention is
to keep these to a minimum - no more than three of each except in
exceptional circumstances, so the box wouldn't need to be very big.

Note that these references are independent of the article, which can
contain as many references as you like which people can click on
individually, so I'm wondering whether we need both.

Example: Ahaziah (king of Judah) might have his main reference to 2
Chronicles 22, so when we fire up that article, that displays. We could
also provide an alternate reference to wherever he appears in 2 Kings.
However, the article will presumably mention 2 Kings and provide a
reference to click on, so do we need the extra box at all?

2. The other side of the same coin. Where there is an article which
covers a scattered selection of Bible/timeline references and there is
no clear "main reference", is it better just to choose one (arbitrarily)
or leave it blank? For instance "Philistines" could link to various
places from Judges onwards (and equivalent points on the timeline).

3. In parallel I'm compiling the database of what names appear where in
the Bible (so we know which Saul is which, for instance). For names
which appear a lot, do we want to use ranges, or put an entry in per
verse where it occurs. (We could, for instance, just note that every
occurrence of Saul in 1 Samuel is Saul (1), and every occurrence of Saul
in Acts is Saul (2).) There are arguments both ways, based on
efficiency, size, and how we end up handling Bible translations we
"haven't seen" - see the doc for more information.

Colin