[mobile-devel] Thoughts re dictionaries integration in And Bible

[Jonathan Morgan]

Hi Martin,

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 5:00 AM, Martin Denham <mjdenham at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have started looking into the implementation of Dictionaries and I have
> various thoughts regarding the design but I thought that while I am still in
> the early stages I would ask if anybody has any particular ideas in this
> area.  I have a few questions.
>
> 1. Do you use Strongs Greek or Hebrew dictionary on your mobile phone?
> Personally I know minimal Greek and Hebrew and would rarely use Strongs.
>  Do people analyse Greek and Hebrew definitions on their mobile using
> Strongs?  I am just trying to see what the requirement is for this before
> going ahead.  I suspect theological students would all say yes but most
> people who love to read their bible can't read Greek or Hebrew.
>

My take would be that if you show Strong's numbers (or something similar) in
Bibles that have them (e.g. KJV) then you would want to be able to look up
the definitions for those words.  I have used them exactly once in
PocketSword.


> It would be interesting to get Crosswire module download stats for the
> different books, epecially Strongs.  Does anybody know if that is possible?
>

http://www.crosswire.org/sword/index.jsp lists download numbers for the top
20 modules over the last thirty days.  StrongsGreek and StrongsHebrew are
numbers 3 and 4 (5411 and 5298) behind KJV and ESV.

2. Do you use general dictionaries on your mobile phone?
> I have often used ISBE in the past but no others.
>

Ditto.

3. Design of Strongs integration in And Bible.
> 3.a I was initially planning to add Strongs numbers in pressable links like
> most s/w that would take you to a page showing the strongs detail for the
> ref pressed.
> 3.b Another alternative might be to do something similar to the Notes
> functionality where all the Strongs numbers in a verse are looked up and
> displayed in a long list.  Either the Strongs detail could be pre-loaded
> with the numbers or clicking a list item would take you to the detail.  The
> advantage of this is that often it is difficult to hit exactly the correct
> link in a web page and this completely avoid small links in between words.
>  Android and iPhone don't have a stylus and so press accuracy is severely
> diminished.
> 3.c A modification might be NOT to display Strongs numbers in the page
> thereby avoiding page clutter but either to use letters (like Notes and
> x-refs) or to use different colours for words.  The number would be
> displayed after navigation to the Strongs ref.
>
> 3. Design of general Dictionary integration in And Bible.
> This seems less problematic.  If you select a module that is a dictionary
> you show some sort of navigation screen and then show the page selected.  An
> alternative would be to go to the last page viewed and allow change by
> opening a navigation page but I think most people will view an entry once.
> For navigation I am thinking of an expandable tree with a-z at the first
> level and words at the second but I need to analyse dictionary keys to check
> that is possible.
>

Bear in mind that not all dictionaries will have English topics, and thus A
- Z will not work for all dictionaries.

Jon
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