[sword-devel] Palm Bible

[Barry Drake]

Hi there ........

On 12 Mar 2003 at 16:34, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
> :) maybe someday.  I'd be interested in working with a group of people to
> make this happen.  If I hear much response to this thread with willing
> volunteers, we can start a group/project aimed at this end.

My thoughts - for what they're worth.  The Palm OS is primitive and slow.  
It has to be.  None of the Palms have much memory, and the architecture can 
never be as fast as your slowest PC.  It's the nature of the beast.  Having 
said that, the two translations I have in parallel on my Palm using Palm 
Bible are very adequate for the purpose.  I can and do change them from 
time to time according to my needs, and as I can have access to any of my 
Sword modules for this purpose, the two I can have on board at any one time 
can be very varied - and one of them can be a commentary if I so choose.

Given the limitations of the Palm and its OS, I really don't think it worth 
pushing the system any further.  I feel quite honestly that we could make 
the biggest contribution if we were to offer every Sword module we have as 
a Palm database, along with the Palm Bible, in its GPL form.  We have that 
already, and the modules are so quick and easy to make, it wouldn't take a 
lot of work.  If then, some enthusiast from our number wanted to make 
improvemements to the GPL Palm Bible software, that would be possible.  I 
see porting of the Sword engine as relatively pointless.  The whole of it 
would be too memory hungry.  Just as one example, Palm stuff has a native 
compression/expansion routine used by all the document readers.  Why soak 
up precious memory by adding a second one?  Also, to include handling of 
many types (structures) of module as Sword does would prove nothing more 
than a memory sink on the Palm architecture.

That's my bit - for what it's worth.  And yes - I would be part of a group 
'doing things' if we went down that path!

God bless,
Barry

-- From Barry Drake (The Revd) minister of the Netherfield United Reformed 
church, Nottingham see http://www.jesusinnetherfield.org.uk for our church 
homepages).

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