[sword-devel] Bible Software Review

[Greg Hellings]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Jonathan Morgan <jonmmorgan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 4:03 PM, Daniel Owens <dhowens at pmbx.net> wrote:
>  >
>  >  I took a look at BPBible, and it is indeed fairly feature rich and pleasing
>  > to the eye. I especially like the way it handles looking up dictionary
>  > entries. I would use it regularly if:
>  >
>  >
>  > Fonts could be set by language or module,
>  > Bibles could be viewed in parallel, either BibleTime or BibleDesktop
>  > fashion, and
>  >
>  > and the Linux installation were a bit easier (I got stuck when trying to
>  > install the swig bindings). The project has made a strong start. The search
>  > dialog is pretty sharp, though average users aren't familiar with regular
>  > expressions. A regular expression builder dialog would be fantastic. The
>  > method that commentaries are linked to the Bible text is great.
>
>  Bear in mind that it is still very much a work in progress, but
>  thankyou for the comments.  I will agree that Linux installation may
>  be hard, and I'm sure that that will be addressed in some way in later
>  releases.  However, I don't agree with the regular expression
>  suggestion.  It is true that most users aren't familiar with regular
>  expressions.  However, regular expressions aren't a feature that most
>  users will need to use.  I understand regular expressions well, and
>  search the Bible frequently, and yet I have never had cause to use
>  regular expressions.  I suspect that only people who understand
>  regular expressions well will actually want to use them.  Most Bible
>  searches are satisfied by multi word or phrase search, which is quick
>  and easy and anyone who has used Google can understand.

I've always had issues trying to figure out what flavor of Regular
Expressions the various Sword front-ends are looking for.  Generally
that is not expressed.  Granted, trial-and-error can often yield the
basic ideas, but it would be nice for most front ends to at least
include some sort of note; "We use such-and-such a regular expression
syntax, available at location Y."

--Greg

>
>
>
>  Jon
>
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