[sword-devel] idea i've had for a bit

[Eicke Godehardt]

It should not be to difficult to write a sword-frontend that outputs
TeX.  TeX is available for any major platform.  Even diffent languages
can be used with TeX and the output looks good.

GBY,
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Greg Hellings wrote:
> Ideally the Sword engine could be adopted to a program such as you are
> talking about, but whether one is in progress or not I do not know. 
> Since the Sword project is just the engine producing the text, the
> formatting would have to be a new front-end idea.  Typesetting of whole
> works, particularly of an entire Bible, would be a very complex
> procedure, and I don't believe that a program could be written in any
> trivial manner that could handle a single leanguage and certainly not
> one that could be applied to multiple languages.  I would be surprised
> if it is not possible to get a normal print-off from some of the front
> ends.  I don't have any in front of me to check, but I would imagine
> that out of the selection available (BibleTime, Gnomesword, BibleCS,
> Biblestudy, MacSword and the related JSword) at least one of those is
> available with printing support, thus enabling someone to print out a
> selection of Bible ranges (most seem to be limited to displaying one
> chapter at a time, so the user would be limited to prtining one chapter
> at a time).
> 
> I think a major question would be if there is actually a market of
> people who would use it and be aware of its existence.  I have trouble
> imaginging that someone with enough access to the Internet, a computer
> and printer and able to download Sword from within a "restricted area"
> would go to the trouble of making a hard copy of that Bible text that
> could be traced back to them.  But, perhaps, I am mistaken.  Most or all
> of the texts that come with Sword seem to be ones that have been around
> for some time, so the commercial use of such an open source program
> seems dubious to me as does the liklihood of a person producing multiple
> copies of a Bible off of a home printer.
> 
> That said, there might be a market for non-nationals to take in a
> computer with Bible software containing scriptures in the native
> language and thus not have to worry about smuggling in printed Bibles. 
> If that person was so equipped, they could then run off copies of the
> text in the native area.  However, I still think it would require a
> massive undertaking of coding, especially by people familiar with
> typesetting and layout of texts, to produce a program that could
> conceivably churn out a printable version of the Bible.
> 
> Just my $.02 on the matter (OK, so it's more like $20.00, but you get
> the idea).
> 
> --Greg