Sunday, August 24, 2008

Work is continuing

I posted an update on the main page a week or so ago, but wanted to elaborate a little bit. I've been doing some major "overhauls" to my files, trying to make it a little better overall, and a lot more usable. Here's a few of the things I've been doing:

- Adding page numbers to references (i.e. it now says something like "Psalms as in Sunday Lauds I, p.533")
- Trying to improve consistency (i.e. how rubrics are worded, general structure in the commons and propers)
- Lots and lots of error correction
- Work on English translations
- Work on Latin hyphenation
- Lots of work on Common of Saints
- Working on Hymn Structure

Some of this is still very much in progress. The Common of Saints thing is big, so here's a little more on that: Obviously there are a lot of 3rd class feasts, which almost always use one common or another. Right now the commons are rather difficult to use, with references to the Little Chapter in I Vespers, etc. I'm trying to eliminate some of this by not having nearly as many references.

Also, since I Vespers is rarely used, I'm rearranging things a bit. I think it was in the pre-55 breviary that you would normally say I Vespers more often than II Vespers, but when the simple/double ranking of feasts was changed to the 1/2/3 class feast ranking, I Vespers became something that only happened on Sundays and I class feasts. As such, in the Common of Saints, I'm making I Vespers as concise as possible, and putting references to II Vespers etc. This will hopefully be more conducive to ease of use.

For those who have downloaded the PDF on the main page recently, there was an error in it which was causing blank pages to be inserted in between every page in the Office of the Dead. I've fixed that now.

So that's about it for now. Once I get through with this round of revisions to the Common of Saints, I'll start working on the Proper of Saints again. The reason for revising the commons first is because I'm also standardizing translations and such, and so many of the versicles and antiphons in the Propers will need to be updated once I'm done with that.

Sorry it's been so long since I posted an update...thanks for your continued prayers!