[jsword-devel] Is JSword a good choice?

[DM Smith]

DM Smith wrote:

> I am posting this note that was sent to me for everyone's response:
>
>
> I'm a developer for Bibles International.  It looks like I will
> be writing a Bible translation editor soon.  I'm considering writing 
> it on
> top of JSword.  Perhaps you can tell me, or I can post, about how 
> feasible
> this would be.

I guess the answer is: It depends. I need a bit more information. JSword 
is very good at digging the text out of a Sword module and presenting it 
to the user. You could easily create an interface that presents a 
passage and an input box for the translation. Your software would be 
responsible for writing the resulting translation to a file. As JSword 
does not have at this time any ability to write a Sword module or to 
take input and save it as OSIS. (This is on our list of future things to 
do and if you could provide it that would be a great contribution.)

If the translation is into a different language, such as Hebrew or 
Greek, and if it is not easy to enter the alternate languages characters 
from your keyboard, then the input abilities that are in FlashCards 
might be useful.

> I'm a C++ guy so obviously I would need to study up on Java,

Java is pretty easy to learn for a good C++ programmer. At this time we 
use Java 1.4 and we have no immediate plans to migrate to 1.5. What this 
means to a C++ is that we don't use generics. The JSword code uses stock 
patterns and oo designs and methodologies. So you should find it pretty 
easy to navigate. That said, you should start with APIExamples 
(http://www.crosswire.org/jsword/java2html/ has all of our source and 
you can find APIExamples.java there)

The basic flow is to install one or more Bibles, locate a Bible, create 
a key for a verse, passage or range of passages and retrieve it as OSIS. 
This is then passed to xslt to transform it into html and then presented 
to the user.

> but beyond that I'm wondering if this is a good choice, or if there is
> anyone else working on or considering an editing feature.

I have not seen it but there was an editor that was used to author 
Crosswire's KJV module. I don't know what it was written in.

> Any insight you
> have would be appreciated. Thanks,
> Birch Champeon
> www.birchandconnie.org
> www.graphetech.org