[sword-devel] Palm Bible Converter

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:39:58 -0800

I have written an app based upon the Victory Bible Reading Plan by the late
Dr. James McKeever, have placed it for sale on Handango, with all proceeds
going to Omega Ministries in Medford, OR.  I would like, eventually, to be
able to tie the daily readings to an open-source Bible program, but am
unsure how to proceed.

I'm looking forward to reading the progress on this board!

Blessings,

Paul
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Denne" <spdlist@ihug.co.nz>
To: <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 3:43 AM
Subject: RE: [sword-devel] Palm Bible Converter

> Hello,
> (I've bcc'ed a number of people I thought may be interested and might not
be
> on this list.)
>
> Nic Carter wrote in sword-devel@crosswire.org:
> > doing stuff like Stephen Denne is doing with Datacute...
>
> I guess I should tell a few more people about my grand plan for
> bible-related software on the Palm... to see what level of interest there
> is.
>
> I've created a concordance program, which uses other's bible programs to
> view the text. This involves launching other bible readers, viewing a
> specific verse. Most bible reader programs store their "current verse" in
> some format (in preferences, or a database), and some of them provide a
> documented API on how to launch their software to view a specific verse.
> What I wanted was to encapsulate all that info & functionality in a
> distributable "library", so that I & others could add more supported bible
> reader programs, or use the same functions to create other tools. As an
> example of other tools, I'm creating a few verse selector applications,
for
> the dual purpose of demonstrating the functionality, and to try out some
> user interface ideas (one I thought would be fantastic turns out to be
> extremely hard to use - I might distribute that too, it does work, and if
it
> did lead more of an appreciation of just how hard GUI are to design.)
>
> I'm toying with calling this project the Datacute Bible Gateway, even
though
> it is more of a switch. I suspect non-techie users will think a switch as
> something that turns light bulbs on and off, and think of a gateway is
> something you go through. Maybe call it an open gateway? It's got nothing
to
> do with gospelcom.net... why are good names for things so hard to find?
>
> The other parts to the Datacute Open Bible Shunting Yards will be
> versification schemes (I'm not an expert on the variations, I'm more
wanting
> to be able to handle the variations): Lots of bible software will want to
> have a short code (small number of bits) for a reference, and be able to
> translate that code into a full reference, or an abbreviated reference.
The
> code to do this also needs to know how many books, chapters per book,
verses
> per chapter there are. This kind of info doesn't need to be repeated for
> each bible-related application when space is precious. Users of different
> languages can replace the pdb for a particular versification scheme with
one
> they are use to.
> The gateway will probably be a panel (appears in Prefs) where you can
chose
> your preferred bible reading program, your preferred bible text supplying
> program, your preferred bible searching program, your preferred
bookmarking
> program, your preferred reading plan program, your default versification
> scheme to use if one isn't specified in the API calls, etc etc.
> I realise there are a lot more problems related to versification schemes,
> but I figure I can start with my concordance indexes being for a
particular
> versification scheme each, and the verse selectors running with whichever
> the user chooses.
>
> I also would like the gateway to speak some of the APIs I know of, (e.g.
> Laridian Software's). Not just when talking to MyBible, but if combined
with
> knowing how to set other bible software's current verse, this will enable
> products that currently make use of MyBible to also make limited use of
the
> other bible programs that don't yet, or may never support Laridian's API.
>
> The specifics of how to use the gateway will be documented, and available
> for free, so that lots of developers can write bible-related Palm
software,
> re-using existing functionality. For example, someone might write a Desk
> Accessory that asks the gateway to launch the user's favourite verse
> selector to choose a verse, then asks the gateway to retrieve the text for
> that verse from the user's favourite bible text supplying program, then
> shows it to the user for confirmation, then pastes the reference and text
> into the active field.
>
> I want the gateway to be open source, but not till I've got a bit more of
it
> coded, and talked to a few more people. eg. I recently read on
> palminfocenter that David Fedor, the Director of Developer Architecture
and
> Disclosure and one of the most senior programmers at PalmSource Inc., also
> wrote Laridian's MyBible ... he might have some great ideas on how to
> structure & talk to this gateway. If anyone has his email, are you able to
> send it to me privately?
>
> How is this related to The Sword Project? I'm not too sure... this plan
> sounds like it would intersect with some of the functions that a sword lib
> for PalmOS would provide.
>
> Stephen Denne.
> --
> Datacute - Acute Information Revelation Tools
> http://www.datacute.co.nz/
>
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