[mobile-devel] Android bible

Mon Jul 5 16:03:47 MST 2010

I'd created quite a bit of code years ago for palm, that worked with
palmbibleplus, including playing with various verse selectors. I like
the grid of books, arranged as 5 columns of 14 books, since then you
get (protestant) old testament taking up 3 columns, and new testament
taking up 2, and you can scan down a column of book abbreviations much
more easily than scanning across.

Having them as columns left to right also seems natural as you look
for books later in the bible further on the right hand side of the
screen.

Regards,
Stephen Denne.

On 6 July 2010 10:17, David Forslund <forslund at mail.com> wrote:
> My model is the PalmBiblePlus (http://palmbibleplus.sourceforge.net).  It
> has a very clean and efficient interface.   Your android bible doesn't need
> to look it at all, necessarily.  I think a table of the books of the OT and
> the NT in a simple grid alphabetically arranged (all on one screen) that can
> be selected works to select the bible.  For the Chapter a screen showing
> each chapter number in a 2-d grid.  Once selected, it could show you the
> list of verses.  Selecting on the grid cell on each screen takes you to the
> next screen or for the verse screen to the verse.  An OK button on each
> screen would simply take you to the first item on the list.  I think these
> point and click grids are much faster than scrolling down to the book and
> chapter in a very long scrolling list.
>
> The other feature that works well for me is the ability to go to the next or
> previous chapter by pressing an arrow (the arrow might come up dynamically
> when you move the screen and go away after a few seconds to release the
> screen real estate).   A simple stack memory of the previous chapters viewed
> would make it easy to navigate between a set of verses.  Stored bookmarks
> also are helpful in more general situations where you want to jump around
> amongst a set of verses in various books.
>
> Perhaps this helps?
>
> Dave
> On 7/5/2010 3:38 PM, Martin Denham wrote:
>
> Hi SonWon & David,
> Can you point me to any screen shots of the sort of grid you mean?  I can't
> quite imagine what you are suggesting.
> Thanks
> Martin
>
> On 5 July 2010 22:19, David Forslund <forslund at mail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>   I think the grid is a good idea.  Other bible readers use this nicely
>> for the book, the chapter, and the verse (all accessible from a navigation
>> tab or from a menu selection).
>>
>> Have you considered the use of the XOM toolkit (http://www.xom.nu/) for
>> reading the XML?  I've used it for a long time on other Java applications
>> and it is much faster and more memory efficient than the DOM XML model.
>> It also is less prone to programming errors.
>>
>> I have the Android development environment and have developed many Java
>> apps over the years, but haven't started developed on the Android yet.
>> Perhaps I will look at what you have done and see if there is anything
>> sensible I could contribute.
>>
>> Dave Forslund
>> On 7/5/2010 1:38 PM, Martin Denham wrote:
>>
>> Thanks SonWon,  That is useful input and thanks for encouragement.
>> 1. I used Pocket e-sword for years and tabs for bible/commentary etc is
>> the approach Pocket e-sword used but it uses a whole row and I found I
>> normally just used 2 tabs (bible & commentary) so I was planning to
>> initially have a bible/commentary button on the main menu bar (as you
>> suggest at the end of point 1).
>> 2. I have already switched to using a standard menu on my own local build
>> after playing with Troy's Bishop.  I have only just got an Android phone and
>> never pressed the Menu button!!!
>> 3. I am not sure how to best fit book/chapter nav on one screen.  I
>> initially tried and failed to copy Pocket e-sword's nav, but list items are
>> so big on the Android  I have thought of putting the books into a grid, but
>> then that still leaves up to 150 chapters.  All ideas appreciated.  I am
>> currently thinking of 2 tabs - tab 1 containing a grid of books and tab 2 a
>> list of chapters.  Alternatively I could have 3 tabs
>> Document/BibleBook/BibleChapter.  That would also remove the Document button
>> from the menu.
>> Did you realise you can drop other books from the CrossWire site into the
>> appropriate place under the jsword dir on the sdcard and after restarting
>> AndBible you can view them.
>> I need to select verses to enable display of the correct commentary verse
>> associated with the currently viewed bible passage and I was considering
>> auto verse calculation based on the current distance scrolled down the
>> ScrollView - that is something I can play around with.
>> Last weekend I managed to increase speed considerably by bypassing some
>> slow DOM creation code - now I just need to work around a couple of bugs but
>> most docs/chapters display fine.
>> I am hoping my youngest daughter will create a splash screen for the app
>> to distract users from the slowish start up time.  Also new  name
>> "and-the-word" instead of "AndBible".  What do you think?  It obviously
>> comes from John chapter 1.  I thought AndBible was a bit obvious.
>> Best Regards
>> Martin
>> On 5 July 2010 19:13, SonWon <sonwon.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Got it, when I unzipped SdcardBibles it placed the jsword in a
>>> SdcardBibles folder.  I moved jsword to root of the sdcard and all is well.
>>> Thank you very much.  This is a very good start!
>>> My first suggestion is to place tabs across the bottom to easily switch
>>> between text, like Bible, commentary, dictionary, and etc..  Maybe this
>>> could be done with the menu button?
>>> Second suggestion, move the navigation buttons into a
>>> menu assessable from the menu button.  This will free up space for the text.
>>> Third suggestion, make the navigation to a new book, chapter, and verse a
>>> table that fits all on one screen so the user doesn't have to scroll.  I
>>> have a lot more suggestions to make about this area.
>>> Thanks again!
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Martin Denham <mjdenham at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi SonWon,
>>>> Sorry you had problems.  Error handling in the app needs to be greatly
>>>> improved on.  Did you unzip SdcardBibles.zip to your mobile's sd card and
>>>> have you now got a directory named jsword in the root of your sdcard?
>>>> To uninstall the application you can go to Settings/Applications/Manage
>>>> applications/Bible/Uninstall.
>>>> Kind regards
>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> On 5 July 2010 14:27, SonWon <sonwon.1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Martin,
>>>>> Bad news, I am unable to run the application.  I get a forced closed
>>>>> error?  I am using Android version 2.1-update1 on a Sprint EVO.
>>>>> Let me know if there is anything I can do to help solve this problem.
>>>>> Also, how do I uninstall the application?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:11 PM, Caleb Maclennan <caleb at alerque.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2010/7/2 Martin Denham <mjdenham at gmail.com>:
>>>>>> > I have built a working prototype of a bible for Android mobile
>>>>>> > phones.  The
>>>>>> > prototype uses a slightly modified JSword back-end.  You can
>>>>>> > download the
>>>>>> > prototype from http://code.google.com/p/and-bible/downloads/list.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Martin,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Excellent work, this looks great for a prototype! Keep it up.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I will be following progress closely and perhaps participating at some
>>>>>> point.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Caleb
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>
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>>
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