[jsword-devel] Fwd: JSword Questions

[Joe Walker]

I just sent this reply to Don ...
I dont think this is related to the Newsforge announcement earlier?
I'll try to get 0.9.8 out ASAP if there are hordes on their way over!

Joe.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joe Walker <joseph.walker at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 23:30:53 +0100
Subject: Re: JSword Questions
To: Don Parris <evangelinux at matheteuo.org>

Some answers:

> 1. When did you start your project?  (how long have you been around?)

About 6 years ago I started work on "Project B" which became J-Sword a
few years ago as the Java version of the Sword project. We recently
split the core library from the user interface which is now called
"Bible Desktop". Multiple names seems to be a tradition of many open
source projects!

> 2. Who are the key players in your project?

DM Smith and Mark Goodwin have been committing a lot of code recently.
Mark has made the MacOS version of Bible Desktop much better, and
there are several other people that have smaller bits of work Eric
Galluzzo for one there have been several. We all owe a debt of thanks
to Troy Griffitts who runs the greater Sword project. He doesn't write
code for us but he does host the website and maintain our source code
repository and mailing lists and so on. 100 jobs that we only notice
when their broken!

> 3. What is your project's goal/mission? (What is your product or service?)

To become a simple free tool to help people read and study the Bible
for themselves.

> 4. Can you give me a rough estimate of the number of people using or
>    participating in your project?

No and Yes-ish.
I've just checked with the mailing list and there are 54 people on the
mailing list, I have no idea how many people have downloaded or tried
the software out though.

> 5. What are the key features of your project?

I think we do 2 things that I've not seen anywhere else.
You have a passage selection area where you can very quickly type in
exactly what you want to see, you are not restricted to being shown
just 1 chapter. So you can ask for "Gen 1:1" or "Gen 5:1-4, Ruth 3,
Jude 1" and it will always show you just what you asked for.
The second thing is that we use this feature with searching, so if you
search for "aaron" then the passage selection area changes to show you
all the verses in Exodus and elsewhere where Aaron appears, and you
see the text of all the verses together in the display - you can then
edit the passage selection area to narrow your search down and keep
the most relevant. Tabs allow you to keep a number of verse sets open
at any time. It's a bit like having an infinite number of fingers to
stick in your physical Bible.
I think the system is both simple and a powerful Bible study aid.
And it runs anywhere Java runs, so it is probably available on some
systems that don't have many other alternatives.

> 6. Who will benefit most from your project?  (individuals? churches? large?
>    small? etc.)

Probably mostly individuals or small groups doing Bible study.

> 7. Have you seen any increase in activity in the last two months? (in terms of
>    the number of users or downloads)  Can you explain the reason for the
>    increase?

I've not noticed anything, but then I've not been watching any usage
stats so I probably wouldn't have. Should I have noticed something?

> 8. Have you taken on any new developers/users (recently) to help with your
>    project?

I don't think I "take people on" - I'm glad for any help I can get.
Recently I've been getting patches from more people and MacOS has been
much better supported as a result.

> 9. How can people get involved with your project?  What do you need most?

Step 1 is to download it and have a go. We are about to release 0.9.8
(God willing) which should be a lot better than the last release.
 http://www.crosswire.org/bibledesktop/download.html
Step 2 is to join the mailing list and report bugs and help with
development. Right now we need people who can test the application out
and make sure it works properly everywhere. It should be easy to
translate the user interface of Bible Desktop into languages other
than English, but so far we've not found any linguists up to the task.

> 10. Are you aware of churches that already use FOSS?  Are you aware of any that
>    are considering using FOSS solutions? (consider the OS and the apps
>    separately, as some may use a proprietary OS and FOSS apps.)

I've heard of people giving presentations using OpenOffice on Linux,
and obviously many people use Apache et al. for web serving. The only
other major use of computers that I can think of is in publishing, and
I think Linux is a way behind either MacOS or Windows for publishing
support.

> 11. Would you be interested in meeting and/or working with other Christian
>     admins/consultants/developers?

We can always do with more help.


On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:38:10 -0400, Don Parris
<evangelinux at matheteuo.org> wrote:
> Here you go.  Decided to send it off-list, as that's been my standard approach.
>
> If you need to pass this on to other developers on the list, that's fine.
> Take a little time if need be.  I'm trying to get a good feel for where your
> project stands right now.  You might add something about the direction
> you're heading (a view of the fairly near future).
>
> Thanks,
> Don
> --------------
>
> 1. When did you start your project?  (how long have you been around?)
> 
> 2. Who are the key players in your project?
>
> 3. What is your project's goal/mission? (What is your product or service?)
>
> 4. Can you give me a rough estimate of the number of people using or
>     participating in your project?
>
> 5. What are the key features of your project?
>
> 6. Who will benefit most from your project?  (individuals? churches? large?
>     small? etc.)
>
> 7. Have you seen any increase in activity in the last two months? (in terms of
>     the number of users or downloads)  Can you explain the reason for the
>     increase?
>
> 8. Have you taken on any new developers/users (recently) to help with your
>     project?
>
> 9. How can people get involved with your project?  What do you need most?
>
> 10. Are you aware of churches that already use FOSS?  Are you aware of any that
>     are considering using FOSS solutions? (consider the OS and the apps
>     separately, as some may use a proprietary OS and FOSS apps.)
>
> 11. Would you be interested in meeting and/or working with other Christian
>      admins/consultants/developers?
>
> 12. Anything else you feel is important to mention?
>