[sword-devel] Unicode Bible program

[Joachim Ansorg]

I don't know exactly, but as far as I know QT 2.x supports Unicode. It should
be possible to make use of it.

--Joachim

 > > Hello everyone,
> >
> > As I've mentioned before on this list, I'm interested in a Bible program that
> > can used with languages that are not Latin based (i.e. don't use ASCII or
> > ISO-8895 encodings). I have the following options and I would appreciate
> > comments on them.
> >
> > 1. Find free Bible software that supports Unicode.
> > 2. Modify SWORD to support Unicode.
> > 3. Create a new Bible program that is focused on Unicode support.
> 
> My vote goes to 2: we can make the most impact by combining efforts.  Collaboration
> is to be valued more highly than individual effort in this area.
> 
> > I've looked for free Bible software that supports Unicode and I haven't been
> > able to find any. (If anyone here knows of a program that I've missed, please
> > let me know).
> 
> There is an effort called JBible.  I don't remember any more about it than that.
> Try a search on Google and you'll probably find them.
> 
> > Since SWORD is written in C++, Unicode support would have to be done with a third
> > party library. Using a library would allow processing of Unicode text but there
> > isn't any consistent way to render Unicode text across platforms. I'm not really
> > familiar with the SWORD code; would anyone care to comment on how easy it would
> > be to subclass SWText to create a Unicode text class? Does anything in the
> > parent classes assume 8 bit chars?
> 
> I'll leave this to Troy for comment.
> 
> > Creating a new program has some potential. Java would be the obvious choice for
> > a language since Unicode support is native and it has a standard
> > cross-platform way to render Unicode text. Also, new software wouldn't burden
> > SWORD with a lot of code that would only be used for Unicode texts. Troy, would
> > it be possible to include new software like this under the SWORD umbrella?
> 
> Java is cool.  Java is neat.  Java is slow.  I wrote my first prototype frontend in
> Java and it killed the machine.  I'd be interested to see how it performs in the new
> GCC 2.95 compiler suite.  They have a Java compiler called gcj.  I've downloaded it,
> but haven't played around yet.
> 
> > I am curious what people think about this. Clearly there is a need for free
> > Bible software that handles non-European languages/scripts.
> 
> I couldn't agree more.  We need to make this happen so that Christian missions and
> non-English-speaking churches can have resources at their disposal without having to
> pay through the nose for products that they have no say about.
> 
> > What is the best
> > way to make it happen?
> 
> Find someone to pay you to work on it full time.  ;-)
> 
> Paul
> ---------
> "He must become greater; i must become less." - John 3:30
> http://www.bigfoot.com/~paulgear
> 
> P.S.  If people haven't heard, i've shut down my OpenBible project, which was to be
> a GNOME frontend for Sword.  See <http://gear.apana.org.au/OpenBible> for details.
-- 
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