[sword-devel] Android SWORD

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Martin,

Great news on your success of getting JSword to build on Android.  I'm
sure the JSword mailing list would be interested to hear about your success!

I'm not sure about the speed.  I will add a primitive search box to my
test app and let you know how long a complete search of the KJV (a
heavily marked up Bible) takes on my G1.

Troy.




On 06/09/2010 05:28 AM, mjdenham wrote:
> Hi Troy,
>
> I just thought I would mention that I have also been playing around with
> Android.
>
> I have spent the last few weeks creating a prototype bible viewer
> application for Android, but I just noticed Troy's messages in this forum. 
> I took a slightly different technical approach to you and I don't know which
> is better and I also came at this project with the aim of creating a mobile
> bible viewer I could tweak and improve rather than specifically to write an
> Android front end for Sword.  By way of information I thought I would
> outline my approach and what led me to start.
>
> I have used Pocket e-Sword for many years but development has now ceased on
> Pocket e-Sword and it is already looking a bit old, as is WinMob that it
> runs on, so I started thinking what to use in the future.  Although I loved
> using Pocket e-sword there were one or two things that I would have loved to
> change if I had access to the source but the source was closed.  Most pocket
> bible apps seem to be closed source and many charge money or depend on being
> on-line so I began to think about writing my own.  I have been writing Java
> code for a living since the 90's.  I looked at Java ME which unfortunately
> is not supported by recent, popular, trend-setting phones like iPhone and
> Android and started going that route but there doesn't seem to be much 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1414288/j2me-vs-android-vs-iphone-vs-symbian-vs-windows-ce
> buzz around Java ME  at the moment.  I briefly thought of iPhone but refuse
> to learn Objective-C, buy a Mac, and bend over backwards to get the app into
> App Store.  Then I realised that Google have built Android primarily for
> Java Applications and Gartner predict that by 2012 Android will outsell the
> iPhone so I downloaded the Android SDK and am impresed by the application
> framework Google have put into Android.  Incidentally I went to a
> fascinating talk on Android by Reto Meier yesterday evening.
>
> As Android hosts Java apps so well it seemed a good idea to use java front
> to back so I downloaded the  jSword and sword-Common projects back-end to
> serve the OSIS documents and started creating a Java front-end for jsword on
> Android so I have now been doing that for the last couple of weeks off and
> on.  I included the jsword and common jars in my Android app and simplified
> the xslt template I found in bible-desktop and now have a basic bible viewer
> app.
>
> Troy, I am interested to see that you use jni to access a C back-end.  Is
> that right?  Does this give better performance or is there another reason.
>
> In the front end I am currently using a TextView but briefly used a WebView
> which has better html support. I may have to switch back to WebView.  I
> tried to copy the PocketSword verse selection screen but failed so I am just
> using 3 combos for now.
>
> I haven't used Crosswire code before and it took me a while to get used to
> OSIS and jsword but the code looks great and I am now familiar enough with
> jsword to find my way around the necessary parts.
>
> Here is a screen print of the current state:
> http://sword-dev.350566.n4.nabble.com/file/n2248754/android-bible1.jpg 
>
> For now I am still happily trying to improve on the prototype but I could
> switch and contribute to a central project  with others.  My only aim is to
> create a good open source bible I can tweak and that others may find useful
> too.
>
> Best regards
> Martin
>