[sword-devel] Java Bibles

[Joe Walker]

Hi,

I've not heard of any problems yet, so I'll asume that no-one has hit any
major hitches. Some things to try with the download:

Best Match: It does some fuzzy matching so that "For God so loves the world"
gets a match (The original says "loved" not "loves") The easiest route into
Best Match is to start the ToolShed, turn on the built in webserver (Server
tab), and browse to http://localhost:8080/examples/servlet/SPage in NS/IE,
then select Best Match from the drop down.

Passage Maths: Perhaps best on the command line (although there is a
Javascript parser in the ToolShed). An example:
$ search -m "[gen 1 1-10, Revelation 6:1] - [mat-rev]"
This takes a list of verses (the first 10 in the Bible plus one in
Revelation) and removes all the verses in the NT.
The idea is that it should parse a passage reference in any way you are
likely to type it in, and is designed to be internationalizable.

XML Data Sources: Using the ToolShed web server - click "Config" in a
browser window and try changing the way Bible pages are formatted and the
way Web Pages are formatted. The idea is that you can make your view look
like an Oxford AV Bible, or an NIV or whatever.

Flexible Bible Sources: Not something that is easy to demonstrate since to
save space I only included the AV text. The system is designed so that I can
add a Sword format reader, and a GBF format reader and so on. There are
currently 3 understood formats RAW (designed to save download time) SER
(designed to be fast) and JDBC (my read-only reference source). It currently
converts between all the formats that it knows about. If you really want to
play, and have time to spare the ToolShed will generate a RAW format AV from
the SER format provided.

Bible Mapping: If you are really patient you could try the Mapper. The idea
is that it creates a map of Bible verses, drawing lines along books, putting
verses that are similar together where possible (using the Best Match stuff
above) However it is very slow. Shout if you want to know more.

Plans for the Future:
We have a working thesaurus (not part of the download - We've used WordNet)
and we're working on a system where we can ask questions like "Where was
Abraham born?" - the thesaurus knows that Abraham = Abram and that Ur is a
place (WorldNet understands word senses), and so searches for verses with
Abram,Abraham, and a place name. Hopefully finding Ur. Yes it is fanciful,
but I live in hope!
Strongs numbering. I had a VB prototype system that would answer questions
like "How is this word translated" but I've not had time to integrate it
yet.

I've not had time to re-build my computer yet so all the above it from
memory. Sorry if anything is unclear. Please shout if you have problems.

With love in Christ.

Joe.