[jsword-devel] Before 1.0

[DM Smith]

Aleksander Rozman - Andy wrote:
>Hi !
>
>I will comment on both this comments and originla comments.
>
>>It has been fun working on JSword. There is a lot of excellent 
>>architecture and code.
>>
>>I think that it may be good to do a .97 release as .96 does not work.
>>Kind of a second beta. This way non-programmers can help us discover bugs 
>>to fix.
>>
>>Bible Desktop is fine w/ me.
>>
>>There is still one major startup issue, which I have not mentioned before, 
>>that I think needs to be tackled. The management of options needs some 
>>more work. What is there is excellent. I really like how it is dynamically 
>>built.
>>
>>The notion of options needs to have the notion of program defaults and 
>>have that reflected in the options dialog. There are some defaults that 
>>cannot be simply represented in a static file: such as Font, Look and 
>>Feel, home directory, default paths. When options are saved and no value 
>>is given, then it should not be saved as empty but as using the default.
>
>Look and feel should be set to default LF for OS.

Done.

>Have we done anything tu support skinlf so far? Thoose who don't know 
>skinlf is LF management sistem which supports multiple LF, not only just 
>those made for it, but many others (I think GTK, in work is supoer for 
>Windows XP Themes, ...)

I haven't seen this in the code.

>
>Maybe we should supply fonts with Desktop Bible (or how is new name)...
>
We are defaulting to the font used for JLabel, which in the case of Windows 
XP is Tahoma.
This font when set to an appropriate size is very readable. I presume that 
for any
Java GUI to look good the JLabel font will be excellent.

Yesterday, I looked at the Hebrew and the text was excellent. I will be 
looking at
Greek later today. If there are specific font issues on other platforms then 
I think it would make sense to deliver other fonts.

I think we will get feedback after a .97 release.

>
>>Vines shows internal markup around verse references.
>>
>>2 of the Backends are stubbed out, but books for them are listed. I think 
>>JSword should only show books it can actually do something with.
>>
>>For a 1.0 release, I think the "programmer" helpers, such as debug, view 
>>html, osis and ghtml, need to be hidden.
>
>Maybe we can give an option to start DB with, like -debug in which this 
>options will be added.
>

The problem with flags is that it is not Java's preferred way of passing
options to programs. I think the mechanism was provided to make porting
from C/C++ easier. Java gives preference to property files (which is used
for startup options) and to JNDI (which is not appropriate here).

I think the way the code is setup now, it would be appropriate to use
properties to do it. If in the ~/.jsword directory there were a 
debug.properties
then debug would be turned on and controlled by its contents.

I was thinking of allowing programmers to hand edit the desktop.property 
file
and add a debug property there. But while it is only for developers, hand 
editing
is error prone.

For a delivered debug mode, I think that console messages need to be 
re-targeted to a text widget.

>
>
>>For post 1.0, I think pdf generation via xsl-fo would be good (Apache 
>>FOP).
>
>That would be great...
>
>
>>Print. Helps definitely.
>
>That would be good, but I think probably not so easy to achive.
>I have some code that might be helpful in this one...
>

I have had lots of problems with printing JTrees. The scaling would cause 
lines to be truncated in weird ways. Sometimes with ... and other times just 
chopped short.

When we get to print help will be greatly appreciated.

If PDF is supplied, it can be an indirect means of providing print.

>
>>Full internationalization.
>
>Agree. As I said a long time ago, I don't think that implemnetation of I18N 
>in DP is good, but that is just my opinion (memory).
>

I18n and L10N will not be easy. The notion of MsgBase and Msg will help. 
There needs to be a separation between messages meant for users and messages 
meant for developers. The former need to be localized, the latter don't. 
Developer messages should only be seen in details, or only by developers 
(debug mode).

I mention L18N, because in a recent project with Americans (who were writing 
the program) and Australians (who wanted to use the program). The Aussies 
did not like the spelling and wording that Americans used. We tried to 
obtain consensus for a location neutral wording. But in the end we realized 
that "We all speak English" was too simplistic. So we had to localize as 
well as internationalize. We found that it was easier to add support for 
localization at the same time as internationalization, than to add it later.

But there are LtoR/RtoL issues. These may not need to be tackled unless we 
are targeting delivery to a RtoL culture. (There are also Top to Bottom from 
Left to Right and Top to Bottom from Right to left cultures.) The basic rule 
of thumb is that layout importance needs to follow these directions.

So to deliver to a Hebrew speaking Christian the Horizontal layout of the 
menus will need to be flipped and anchored to the right. Some of Java's 
layouts allow for setting the direction, which would help.

When we get to I18N of actions, your suggestion below will probably need to 
be followed. If memory serves me, resources are looked up during 
initialization after the object has been initially constructed (i.e. after 
calls to this(...) or super(...). Further, the mnemonics will need to be 
language specific.


........... Stuff deleted .................
>We need to fix rendering of some bibles. I think I noticed one mail about 
>that so maybe that is already fixed...
>

I think this is fixed. (Except for RtoL of Hebrew verses.)

>
>Some of my concerns:
>
>- DP implementation: I think we should change DP implementation somewhat. 
>We have class for each action, instead we should put all actions together 
>in main DP class and make just one Action Listener. This is just memory 
>concern, so it's not something that we need urgent. This would be probbaly 
>helop with I18N, even if we keep it at current version.
>

Andy, what is DP?

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