[sword-devel] JSword and development progress

[DM Smith]

Manfred,
	I actively develop JSword and BibleDesktop. If you would take a look  
at the releases we make, they are several times a year. There are no  
guarantees in life, but I intend to actively develop JSword as long  
as the Lord wills. I spend around 20 hours a week on CrossWire  
development.

	I would like to strongly encourage you to help make BibleDesktop  
better rather than creating yet another GUI. BibleDesktop is cross- 
platform already. I think we can reach more by making it better.

	I bet that BibleDesktop has most of what you want. And that the  
features that it lacks is precisely what should be added. Please join  
us on the jsword-devel mailing list. I will be glad to walk you  
through any feature you would like to add.

	JSword is a re-implementation of Sword C++ API. It has most features  
that the Sword API has, but notably is missing support for GenBook  
and module writing (i.e. no Personal Commentary). There are some  
other missing features (such as being able to install modules from  
the network) but these have not been requested. If you want to see  
our "wish-list" go to www.crosswire.org/bugs and look under JSword,  
Common and BibleDesktop.

	The development model is to be responsive to user requests. That is  
if there is strong interest in a new feature, we work on that next.  
Usually, it is because we are personally interested in it ourselves.  
GenBook and Personal Commentary are next on the agenda. GenBook  
because it is the basis of alternate versification and Personal  
Commentary because it is probably the most requested feature next to  
Parallel Bible view.

	We have deliberately not kept JSword in sync with Sword. Our filter  
architecture is superficially similar but very different. So many  
changes to Sword are unnecessary to replicate in JSword.

	Lately, I have been working on the KJV and ESV modules and have not  
been making many changes to JSword. The reason for this is that the  
KJV is the most downloaded module and it was encoded so badly that it  
looked terrible in JSword/BibleDesktop. I have also been contributing  
to the Sword C++ API recently.

	Also, we now have support for compressed dictionaries. We had not  
addressed this earlier because there was only one compressed  
dictionary and the utility of dictionaries in BibleDesktop is weak.  
But we have added it because there are going to be a lot more  
compressed dictionaries in the near future.

	The next release of BibleDesktop also has a bunch of internal  
changes to JSword related to platform appropriate persistence.

	Look for a release in the next few days.

In His Service,
	DM

	
	
On Aug 27, 2006, at 8:28 AM, Manfred Bergmann wrote:

> Hi list.
>
> I'm planing to develop a new Bible Study tool, Java based to be  
> almost platformindependant so that a lot of peaple can be reached.
> Why another frontend? Well I do bible study myself and tried some  
> programs like MacSword, Bible Desktop and Accordance. Had a look at  
> Bibletime, too.
> Although I use Accordance currently I want something that merges  
> the best things of all products and hopefully improve them where  
> they have to be improved. And this something should be freeware or  
> open source.
> SWORD seemed to be the best solution to have a wide range of bible  
> texts, dictionaries and commentaries available.
>
> While using Java I want to use the JSword library for the backend.  
> My question now:
> What is the development progress on JSword. Has it all functions  
> the SWORD (C++) library has? Does it get updated immidiately when  
> SWORD itself is updated? Is the future development guaranteed  
> (Well, I know there are no guarantees but what is the forecast here)?
>
>
> Best regards,
> Manfred
>
>
> 	
>
> 	
> 		
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