[sword-devel] CrossWire website showing all known modules available

[Peter von Kaehne]

On Mon, 08 Nov 2010 07:57:51 -0500
Karl Kleinpaste <karl at kleinpaste.org> wrote:

> Jonathan Morgan <jonmmorgan at gmail.com> writes:
> > I tend to dislike software that forces me to search in certain ways:
> > whether it's "You must select the language before we show you what's
> > available" or "You must select the type of book" or "You must select
> > the publisher's repository", there will be some times when this
> > matches the way I want to search and what I'm looking for, and some
> > times when it does not.
> 
> I find it an extraordinarily odd perspective, that knowing what type
> of book you're looking for is not a normal, all-the-time prerequisite
> to finding what you want.  Does anyone ever ask a salesclerk, whether
> human or automated, "show me the book selection, but I don't even
> know what I'm looking for, much less the language in which it's
> printed, least of all the author or publisher"?

Karl, not by necessity.

1) Some of our Genbooks could easily be formatted as a commentary.
Probably it also should be done and that would remove one reason to look
somewhere else. But right now the distinction is not totally a sharp
one. Maybe it would be worthwhile to file a bug against modules which
offend in this fashion. Luther's complete works is one like that as it
the Father's module (both in parts).

2) Language - I use a lot of Martin Luther's and Calvin's stuff at the
moment for bible college work. I honestly do not care which language it
is as long as it is one I can read. And not all that should be
available in German is available. In fact our English language Luther
offerings are way better than our German ones. So I use them.

> Since this is Bible study software, how would it ever be, that someone
> looking for new books in our environment would not know if he's
> looking for a Bible, or a commentary, or something else?
> 
> If my imagination is insufficient about this problem, feel free to say
> so.  But the idea that you have to specify that you need English or
> Suomi or Caribbean Javanese texts seems to me to be a "level 0" kind
> of requirement.

As above. Mostly yes, but not always. Author could be occasionally more
relevant. 

In fact, I find the language distinction occasionally quite
annoying. I have 4 bibles I use and they are the ESV, the Schlachter
2000, a Farsi one and Luther. I read them for what they are - different
translations with different use cases for me or different emphasis. 

I also do have a multitude of other installs, but they are used only
occasionally and yes, there, language choice is probably relevant, but
- I am a module developer. I am bound to have anything and everything
available even stuff I can not read, let alone understand. Most users
are probably not. 

I think from a usability POV, I am wondering if the language choice
could not be something which should be possible to switch on and off.
Our hypothetical user might be 

- a minister - own language and original languages + maybe French or
  English. 
- a monolingual Anglo-Saxon/German/whatnot user - hide all that is not
  for him.
- a missionary needing his own language, maybe English or French and a
  couple of other languages +/- original languages 
- a Bible Software enthusiast who gets mental raptures for seeing a
  Bible in Southern Timbuctulese available (never  mind that he knows
  not a single soul who could read that), he needs to have access to
  all, but is in fact not our main target user.

But - apart from the last user for whom I think we do not real should
consider - most users will eventually have a selection of 3-10 Bibles
which mentally will not get selected for reading for their language but
simply for what they are - i.e. by name.

I know that I have in the past asked for language tree selection and I
stand by that - it is way better than what we had prior where you had to
dig about to find what you wanted - and then realised that most stuff
was in English. 

But now I think the Central-American BTI bibles do a bit my head in
every time I have to wade past them... 

This is no objection to anything else said by anyone. 

Peter