[mobile-devel] Android bible
David Forslund
forslund at mail.com
Mon Jul 5 19:09:26 MST 2010
On 7/5/2010 6:40 PM, SonWon wrote:
> Hi Martin,
>
> I hope I can continue to help by making suggestions. The design
> thought I have is the less taps or actions on the screen to make it
> work is better and quicker.
>
> 1) & 2) Here are the windows I would like to flip between on screen
> Bible, Commentary, Dictionary, Cross Reference, search list (would be
> nice to be able to select these with minimal taps). And the features
> / menu picks I would like in a Bible reader, Navigation, history
> forward and backward, search. I know I am not thinking of them all.
>
> 3) More on the table navigation screen. I have given this much
> thought, not sure if it makes sense yet so I toss it out to see what
> others think.
>
> * First I have to describe how the keyboard input works.
> Finger down on a button and a little bubble pops up
> confirming the choice. I would like to finger down on the
> navigation window and a bubble would pop up showing me what
> I selected. For example if I finger down on 'Mat' then a
> bubble could pop up with 'Mat' or 'Mathew' in it. If I
> actually wanted 'Mar' then I could slide my finger to 'Mar'
> and the bubble would change to 'Mark'. The Bible book
> selection would not register until I lifted my finger.
>
This is fine, but I think it should be unnecessary if the response is
fast enough. Or a long press takes you to the book directly.
>
> * Once I select the book there should be a button on the
> screen to move backward in case I selected the wrong choice.
>
That button (back) exists on the phone already and should be enabled for
this type of activity. No need to take up more screen real estate. Any
tabs on the screen should be able to suppressed in a configuration file
and one should be able to use the menu button to access tab items. The
back button could also be used to go to a previous verse selection. I
think the find "button" could easily be reached with the menu button,
again to save screen real estate.
>
> * You are right the table size can be to big for the tiny
> screens. So could we draw a table larger than the screen
> and as you move your finger around the table could scroll
> under the finger. The screen would only show you a portion
> of the table depending where you slide your finger to. I
> would avoid tabs, once you select a book just jump to the
> chapter selection table and the same to move to the
> verse. There should also be buttons to skip forward to
> chapter or verse selection and back to book or chapter in
> the table or on the screen somewhere. Drilling to a verse
> is useful for sermons. So I think verse selection should be
> included.
>
I don't think the table size is a problem even for fairly small screens,
if properly designed. It isn't on the Palm which has a fairly small
screen. Check out PalmBiblePlus to see what I mean.
>
> I plan to drop more Bibles and books in the folder soon. Another
> problem I noticed is when I goto ESV I get square boxes, I think it
> was ESV. Any idea what is causing that, I suspect a font maybe.
It works nicely for other Bibles that I already have for Sword (ESV,
NASB, e.g.). I've observed a small problem in that selecting a chapter
of a book, it fails to go to the beginning of the book, but goes to the
middle somewhere. If I select Job 4, for example, verse 9 is in the
middle of the screen. (There also seems to be a small "shadow" below
the tab buttons where nothing is displayed). If the current book
selection is kept, I think it should go to the currently selected book
as a default location rather than the beginning of the list. Just some
suggestions.
Overall, it could use a little speed up, but I think you are fully aware
of that.
I have some questions about commentaries and cross-referencing, but that
can wait for another day. The app is working well even as it is.
Dave
>
> And-the-Word sounds okay. If I think of something different I'll
> bounce it off you. A splash screen would be great, I wonder what she
> comes up with?
>
> God bless,
> ~SonWon (John)
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Martin Denham <mjdenham at gmail.com
> <mailto:mjdenham at gmail.com>> 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
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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
> <mailto: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 <mailto:caleb at alerque.com>> wrote:
>
> 2010/7/2 Martin Denham <mjdenham at gmail.com
> <mailto: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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