[sword-devel] FireBible is back - 2.0b3 released!

[Brian Fernandes]

On 10/5/15 10:25 PM, Matěj Cepl wrote:
> On 2015-05-10, 09:22 GMT, Brian Fernandes wrote:
>> Thanks for pointing that out, no - I was *not* aware of this. We're
>> using js-ctypes, so I believe we're okay, at least for the immediate
>> future. Having said that, the article doesn't speak too favorably about
>> this technology either, so I wonder how long it will last. I'll talk to
>> John and see what we need to do, if anything.
> Just a side-note: I think time is coming more and more to bit
> the bullet and accept https://github.com/zefanja/swordjs as
> a third blessed Sword-compatible system. I am not crazy about
> the current trend of “throw out all programs we have ever
> written and rewrite them in JavaScript” but I am afraid that it
> is getting inevitable to follow the suit. At least with the
> oncoming ES6 the language is getting to be less ridiculous
> (modules and libraries are now being possible at least).
>
True, it isn't so far fetched anymore. Even being barely involved with 
Sword / JSword development though, I balk at the amount of work that 
will be required to make swordjs work as well as Sword and JSword. 
Completing support is one thing (swordjs currently only supports zText 
Bible modules), but fixing the detailed issues you see reported against 
these engines is another. Still, the fact that swordjs can do so much 
already likely proves that this JS implementation can ultimately go all 
the way and this is great.

FireBible's key differentiator is the fact that it's protocol based, and 
works within your regular Firefox session as opposed to being a separate 
app like (like XULSword / BibleZ). I believe this is something that adds 
unique value to some users, while others might not care for it at all - 
other than the Ubiquity integration (my personal favorite ), it is not 
exceptional in any of the other features it supports.

The Future of FireBible would depend on how many users use and 
appreciate this sort of front-end (certainly not a small amount of work 
maintaining it) and what goes on with Mozilla on the technology side. As 
far as the latter is concerned, I found that FireBible breaks in version 
40a because of the new multi-process or "es10" support, if you turn that 
off, it works just fine. The bug is here: 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=940206
The fact that this issue was reported 1.5 years ago, breaks about half a 
dozen extensions, but is still not assigned nor prioritized is 
troubling. I half expect Mozilla to say that custom protocols will no 
longer be supported (though some extensions like ChatZilla which use it 
are quite popular); I pray I'm not right.

In Him,
Brian.