[sword-devel] LcdBible 0.93d 'Release Candidate' available

[Lynn Allan]

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your kind and encouraging words about LcdBible. Your computer is
pretty much exactly the 'audience' computer I'm partially targetting ...
relatively if not thoroughly obsolete (donated computers that American
churches finally give away). I'm pleased/relieved it seems to install and
launch very quickly. I've tested on a 450mhz Win2000 computer, but not a 266
Win98.

Since the original proposal, I'm also trying to maximize it's usability by
grade school kids ... L)ittle C)hildren D)evoted to the Bible.  I think
people who aren't particularly computer literate are more or less baffled by
most Bible software.  90+% of the time, I only use "Go-To" a particular
chapter, or "Search" for one to three words. That's pretty much all that
LcdBible implements.  I've done some Palm and Pocket-PC programming, and you
adjust your mind-set to implement a minimal feature set.

> Installation - no problems only comment would be that it
> would be nice to have an "I've finished" notice when the
> app is installed. I wondered if something had failed as it
> installed so quick and then... nothing.

Good point. Other people have suggested this. Easy to change with nsis. I'll
probably just "launch" LcdBible.

> After first start up, clicking the collapse '-' by Matthew
> caused the screen to refresh but no collapse occured. Clicking again
> collapsed the tree - only happens once per session.

Will investigate. Should be easy to fix. Thx.

> I tried searches too and was pleased with the speed of the searches. Tried
> the obvious - "Jesus" which returned 934 results in about 5 seconds.

The 5 seconds seems kind of slow. Does it make a difference if you defrag?
How about the second time doing the same search? I'll probably go to direct
memory mapping, but the sword-api does a disk seek + read for each verse.
The drive cache on older Windows o/s may not accomplish this like Nt,
Win2000, and WinXp. On a test 450mhz Win2000 system, the first and
subsequent finds are much less than a second (1/10? 1/100? or so). I've got
a DriveImage of Win98-FE I'll put on the 450 mhz system and re-check.

On a reasonably modern computer, the Search seems fast enough to try to
implement "Incremental Searching". It may be able to keep up with
"f.o.r...g.o.d...s" and find only John 3:16 between key strokes. "Phrase"
and "Any Word" searching is fastest, "Exact Words" is slowest. From what I
can tell, the LcdBible searching seems about 100x faster than BibleCS.

> Only thing I couldn't find was how to get to all the results. I was
presented
> with results only from the Gospels - nothing beyond that and no obvious
way
> to page through the results.
> When searching it is nice having the count and search terms used at the
top
> but couldn't quite see the point of 'From:'

LcdBible gets enough "finds" to fill about 20 pages of results, and then
only counts the additional "hits". You can use the scroll bar on the right
of the "Text Viewer" for additional pages.

There are options to "Search from Beginning (Matthew 1 for now)" or "Search
from Current Chapter". To get additional "Jesus" verses, you can go to Mark
10, and search again. The whole "Search" presentation has lots of room for
improvement. I may go to something like Costas Stergiou's excellent "The
Word" or the BibleCS approach.  The Search should present the "hits" with
"Tool-Tips" and direct "Go-To" for the one you want.

> Was most surprised to find all the options for searching on right clicking
> the taskbar button for LcdBible. Hadn't discovered them in 0.92c.

LcdBible is getting new features every week or so. The proposal was
2003-Dec-01. The first alpha was Dec 9. The first beta was Dec 24. There is
now an "Options" dialog with all the "Preferences" that were in the
"hold-your-nose" SysMenu. Also, "Search for Exact Word(s)" is implemented
(generation is different from generations is different from regeneration,
etc.)

Currently, it only uses the WEB New Testament. LcdBible has a goal of
fitting on a 1.44 meg floppy (mostly for quick downloads). I originally
thought that would only allow the NT, but it won't be difficult to fit the
WEB Old Testament within that "budget".

> Not being able to move the window without right clicking seems odd -
> particularly as 0.92c didn't show this behaviour.

fixed. There is a 59kb ver 0.93e version with just the revised exe at:
http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/lcdbible/LcdBibleExeSetup-0-93e.exe

> It's nice that search is automatically by phrase without having to mess
with
> AND even though the app does seem to support that kind of querying too (if
> I'm right...)

All of these are preference options, except "regular expressions" aren't
supported. You can select "All Words" or "Any Word" if you aren't sure of
spelling (e.g. enoch enock eknock). These "preferences" are remembered in
the registry from session to session.

> Some general thoughts: would be nice to be able to maximise the
> window. If you're targetting those of us with 800x600 screens it
> seems a shame not to make use of all that (limited) space.

Mfc doesn't provide for a "layout manager" like Java and more modern gui
frameworks. You can RMB change the font size of the TextViewer, but that is
about it. I think LcdBible uses pretty much all of a 800*600 resolution, as
that was my target. I don't think it would be usable on a 640*480 monitor.
I've had other people suggest more flexible layout and will probably do
something in a subsequent release.

Mfc was chosen because I can pretty much depend on any Win98 or later
computer having mfc42.dll and mvscrt.dll. The download is therefore
minimized, expecially for updates to just the .exe (only 59kb including nsis
installer overhead). The OtherBibleSoftwareApp.exe of other freeware I've
looked at runs from 2.2 meg to 5.3 meg (uncompressed). The installation of
the "Started Set" tends to be about 10 meg.

My impression is that the telephone systems in many/most 3rd world countries
tend to be unreliable and expensive. The 400kb self-contained LcdBible
should download in less than 2 minutes, even with a slooooooow 28.8 POTS
modem. A 10 meg download might cost many dollars if it would download at all
without losing connection.

> I hope these comments don't sound harsh and that they're also of some use.
> The idea is great and having an app that I can load and search in quickly
is
> going to be really useful.

Not at all ... very appreciated. It's probably premature to call 0.93e a
"Release Candidate". There is all kinds of room for improvement. I try to
use most aspects of X)treme P)rogramming, which encourages "Release Early,
Release Often". Since the 2003-Dec-02 POC, there have been about seven
releases, not counting some internationalized prototypes.  I've now got a
1300+ LOC Visual Test script for "robotic gui testing" so refactoring and
new features shouldn't be too painful. It takes about 30 seconds to go thru
a series of tests that would take about an hour by hand, and be very tedious
and error-prone.

You might send your eMail and further comments done "offline" to not clutter
up the sword-devel list. LcdBible is an "unofficial sword front-end using an
experimental plug-in subset of the sword-api". It may or may not be approved
by the sword-maintainers for being part of CrossWire.

> Adrian Frost

For His glory and honor,
Lynn A.
l.allan@att.net