[bt-devel] BibleTime Mobile

Tue May 27 11:15:45 MST 2014

Gary,

So far things are off to a good start. A few bugs I've noticed so far:

1) After the initial load of the app I open one bible (ESV) and then one
commentary (MHC). I then switch the layout to Tabbed. When I do this, the
UI lists the two tabs [ESV, MHC] with ESV selected although MHC is actually
displayed. This only seems to happen the first time I make this selection
after the app is opened.
2) When I have two open tabs, [ESV, MHC], and the second one (MHC) is
active and I then close that tab, the content of the first tab will be
displayed but the background of the tab bar button will indicate that the
one remaining tab is not active. When the first tab (ESV) is active and I
close it, the widget properly auto-selects the second tab after switching
it to the only tab.
3) If I force the program to exit by bringing up the open applications list
on the home screen and swipe away the program, it did not save and restore
the state of my open windows.
4) When I first open a Lexicon/Dictionary, and before I scroll the window,
the selection box is blank instead of indicating the first entry in the
application
5) When only one work is open, and I select the Search option, I am offered
two identical entries in which works to select combo box. It seems to be
that the first is the list of all open works, and the second is the
individual work itself. When there's only one work open it looks strange to
have two entries for it. Also, when no works are open, but one of them used
to be, I will still be prompted to search in that most recently open work,
although when I open that combo box to select a different work, there are 0
entries in it.
6) I've occasionally had times when the app exited/crashed while opening a
work. It's always been times when I've opened a new window with the same
work as a recently closed window, but I have not been able to nail down the
exact circumstances. Sorry for the lack of detail, and I'll keep trying to
peg the exact crash circumstances if I can.

A few improvements to recommend:

1) The performance of the install manager feels a little sluggish while
switching the language or module type selection. This is what I mentioned
in IRC. It's not unusable, it's just a little noticeable.
2) When selecting a work for a new window, especially if the work is going
to render quite a bit of context (such as MHC), the UI will seem to pause
before the new window is drawn with content. Once it caused the system to
claim the app had stopped responding, but the responsiveness came back
within one second. Perhaps the new window could be created and drawn, and
then a little loading/progress bar or spinner could be displayed while text
is rendered?
3) During initial program load, a little bit of progress or spinner similar
to the desktop splash screen so I know that the black window is not the
final form? If I wasn't aware of the text reading and caching that Sword
does when an SWMgr is created, I would be surprised by this delay.
4) The ability to link scrolling of one work to another - probably only
useful for Bible/Commentary modules so that I can have open two works and
they function similarly to parallel Bibles or a study Bible. This needn't
be an automatic process - it could be a selection to say which two or more
works the user wants linked together.
5) The first time a lexicon is opened, BibleTime's backend code will read
and cache all the keys in it in a file and will only revisit that list and
regenerate it when the module version # is updated. For most lexica
(Strong's Greek, Strong's Hebrew, etc) this is perfectly reasonable.
However, for larger works (WebstersDict) this resulted in a delay long
enough that I thought the application had crashed. Perhaps this generation
could be pushed off into a non-UI thread such as during the
installation/update phase?
6) I'd like to be able to add a custom document repository - perhaps I
missed how to do that? But I'd like to be able to point the application to
my private repository at home and install from there. This is doubly
enticing now that the engine has support for SFTP installation sources.

While my phone is pretty powerful, on older hardware creation of the
CLucene index can be slow. I believe Nic Carter (Pocket Sword over on iOS)
has implemented a repository where users can download a CLucene index for
an installed work from our main repositories. While this is going to be the
standard Sword-created CLucene and not the BibleTime specific index, it
might be nice to look at offering a similar feature. Obviously it wouldn't
replace the creation of local indexes for private modules, but it might be
a nice feature to offer the user the choice of downloading a pre-made index
vs creating their own locally.

I was also able to install the "Personal" commentary from the CrossWire. It
might be reasonable to hide that one if you're not planning on bringing the
editing functionality into play.

I'm sure I'll have more ideas and thoughts as I fiddle with it more, I just
wanted to dump this while it's all still fresh. Overall, it feels very
solid in terms of functionality. I'm quite impressed. Is there an entry in
our wiki or the source docs somewhere about how to setup a development
environment to build and hack on this?

--Greg

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 11:29 PM, Gary Holmlund <gary.holmlund at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> I have been working on a alternate frontend for BibleTime that works well
> on Android phones and tablets. It is called BibleTime Mobile. Some features
> are:
>
>    - Open Bible, Book, Commentary, Cult, Daily Devotional, and Glossary
>    windows
>    - Scroll through the entire document continuously.
>    - You can open multiple windows and set the window arrangement mode to
>    either single, tabbed, or splitting the view horizontally, vertically, or
>    both.
>    - Adjust the font size of user interface text while looking at UI
>    elements as they change.
>    - Adjust the font size of document text while looking at at the
>    document.
>    - Install works from any of several internet sources.
>    - Saves state of windows when you quit and restores them when
>    starting.
>    - Search multiple works at once.
>    - Internationalization is ready but no translations have been done.
>
> I would like to get some feedback about it. If you have a android phone or
> tablet version 3.0 or higher, it should run. I have done all my testing
> with a Nexus 5 phone and Nexus 7 tablet with android version 4.4.
>
> To install it:
> 1. Change your Settings, Security, Unknown Sources to allow unknown
> sources.
> 2. Download the apk file from
> http://sourcearchives.com/bt/bibletimemobile.apk
> 3. Using a file explorer, select the bibletimemobile.apk file. It should
> ask if you want to install. Say yes.
>
> Once you run it you will need to download some documents (works). Part of
> what I want feedback about is how easy it is to figure out what to do, so I
> won't give any details about that now.
>
> If you do try it, I would like your feedback, good or bad. Just reply to
> this email.
>
> Gary Holmlund
>
>
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>
>
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