[sword-devel] Firefox front-end

[Brian Fernandes]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of replies I've received - and 
all positive to boot. I have never come across such a high volume dev 
list till date. Awesome.

I will try and respond to all the questions I've received here.

Jon
>Looks nice.  Strangely reminiscent of BibleDesktop (I wonder why...)

Thanks! I'm not sure if your question about the similarity was rhetorical, but for the record, this is most likely because I used the same XSL sheet used by BibleDesktop to convert the OSIS data to HTML. 

>In other Sword applications I think that sword:// tends to be used.
>This allows support for multiple different types of bible programs.
>You are welcome to use bible, but I think sword would be more
>consistent with other sword applications.

I actually picked bible because the XSL transform actually creates links with this format by default. sword seems to be the marginal winner, so perhaps I'll just implement both like the other apps seem to be doing.

I noticed that the links did not include the bible version component (DRC, ESV, etc.) but perhaps that is because it is implicit (same bible you are currently rendering from). 

Would be nice to see the protocol explained in the Wiki though.

Regarding Sword vs JSword: I prefer (and am more familiar with) Java than C++. The Java <> Javascript/Firefox interface is not too difficult to work with (but takes a while to get used to). For Firefox, I believe working with native apps requires more effort. Since both Java and the extension binaries (just an archive of XML and JS files) would be OS independent, this seems to be the approach with the least overall pain. 

I don't know how long it's going to take me to write this, but it's not going to be overnight; hopefully by the time I get to the advanced bits, DM will have evened the odds :) 

>There was a Bible toolbar for FireFox that relied on Bible Gateway -
>this probably doesn't affect your proposal at all, but you might as
>well be aware of it.
Yes, I did know about this and you're right, this is entirely different.

DJ

You are just like me, FF is open always and I don't like leaving it. After I get it working for bibles (completely), I will definitely expand to support more. I have only been using Sword for a week now, so not too experienced with it's features.

Daniel, Karl, Frank & Eeli

Thanks for the protocol overview. Daniel, you mentioned someone (or you?) played around with FF as the display engine. This is really the core of what I'm doing. Any idea what happened to this effort?

Chris

Agreed, if the protocol details make it to the wiki, that would be great.

Robin

Yes, definitely going to add a search capability. But I need to spend more time getting the basics right before going there.

I'm definitely going to take this forward and will keep you guys posted as soon as I have anything remotely usable. 

Thanks for your support, much appreciated,
Brian.