[sword-devel] Introduction

[N. Trevor Brierly]

Hello all,

	This is to introduce myself briefly.  I'm Trevor Brierly, from the Northern
Virginia area.  I've been a Java developer for the past 1 and a half years,
with 4 years of experience before that in ASP, Visual Basic, etc., all of it
primarily in web development or tools development.

	I'm interested in the SWORD Project primarily because I've been very
frustrated trying to use the commercial software for Windows that currently
exists for Bible study.  (NavPress WORDSearch, Logos, etc.)  The interfaces
are miserable to work with, and as a developer the thought naturally occured
that I could probably design something better myself.  Some cold water was
thrown on that idea when I did some investigation into the STEP format and
found that it was a binary format based on RTF which is miserable to work
with.  The thought then occurred to me that it would make more sense to use
XML to encode texts of the Bible and related study works.  Further
investigation led me to Bible Technology Group  (conveniently located about
3 miles away from me in Chantilly, VA!) and their OSIS format.  I had some
interesting conversations with Mike Perez and Steve DeRose from the ABS
there, and with Troy who was visiting.

	I'm most interested in working on the Windows interface for SWORD.  2 or 3
months ago I think it was that I spoke to Troy about this, and he indicated
that at that time there was no one really working on it.  Is this still the
case?  I'm very interested of course in getting in contact with anyone else
who is (or was) working on the Windows interface.

	Also, the "SWORD Project for Windows" page
(http://www.crosswire.org/sword/develop/biblecs/index.jsp) is currently
spewing ServletExceptions.  Who would I speak to about this?

Thank you for listening!
grace and peace,
Trevor Brierly




"...the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according
to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be
moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis:
...We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory,
we thank you for the greatness of your splendour."           J.R.R. Tolkien