[sword-devel] [bd-users] Map Idea

[Jonathan Morgan]

Note that I am CC'ing sword-devel on this.  I suspect that that would
be a better place to discuss this.

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 10:38 AM, Brent Coffey <bcoffe at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  Well I checked out the web bible mapping web site and the ccel web site.
> The bible mapping site is similar to what I'm thinking but far far simpler
> than what I was imagining.  But could be a valid way of starting...just mark
> known locations from verses that mention a location. I think I know how to
> do the GUI, conceptually at least.  A really slick tool might be to do like
> a flash/flex front-end instead of using swing or any of the other standard
> java toolkits.  But that would get away from the free tools.  Then again
> using SWT or even Apples JVM can make so pretty nice GUI's, IMO.
>
>  I figured it may not be so bad to pull in map data from the java WorldWind
> project (NASA project, like google). But yes it is defiantly ambitious and I
> have no idea how much I want or am willing to invest in the effort.  Just
> kicking some more "unique" ideas around.   Would be nice if BibleDesktop
> could out shine logos, then maybe Logos would open up their Libronix format
> which I believe is a closed standard? Would be great if any piece of
> software commercial or open source could read Libronix files.  The price of
> logos is so high and with no major commercial  competition it seems like it
> is not as innovative as it could be.
>
>  But it does seem to me that the real challenge and the most useful thing is
> the idea of "tagging" meta data to books, chapters, verses, words, or
> phrases.  This technology would be foundational to doing any of the mapping
> ideas as well as a host of other things it seems.  Where would I start to
> even get requirements for such a huge undertaking?  I checked out CCEL but I
> didn't see anything that jumped out for annotations?  Perhaps I missed
> something?

If you are interested in getting location data, have a look at
http://www.openbible.info/.

A few things that are worth considering:
1. Generic and Useful are not necessarily connected.  The mere fact
that I can attach arbitrary information to verses doesn't mean that
that information will be easy to use afterwards.  A format specific to
something like maps may be easier to implement and use.
2. A distinction would need to be made between making an annotation to
a particular version of the Bible and making an annotation to a
particular verse in any Bible (for example, I don't really want to tie
map locations to a particular Bible, but I do want to tie them to a
particular verse or verse range - which may not be present in all
Bibles).
3. How are you planning for annotations to be distributed?  For
example, your Bible maps annotations should not be version specific,
and as such shouldn't be distributed with a version, so they must be
installed in some other way (either automatically or explicitly).
4. Are you also wishing to annotate dictionaries, commentaries,
GenBooks and so on, or just Bibles?

Jon