[sword-devel] Bishop for Android and iOS / JavaScript bindings

Thu Mar 22 19:26:05 MST 2018

Dear Michael,

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement.

On 03/22/2018 05:54 AM, Michael Johnson wrote:
> For what its worth, I tested on 4 platforms:
>
>   * Acer tablet with Android 4.4.2
>   * Motorola phone with Android 7.1.1
>   * Apple iPad Pro with iOS 11.2.6
>   * Apple iPhone 7 plus with iOS 11.2.6
I am happy to hear the app works well on the range of devices you've
reported.

Regarding anything left before promoting general usage...

I still think one flaw to fix before promoting the app for general use
is the warning when a module necessary for a function isn't installed.

It's a pretty simple change.  When someone selects "Verse Study" / "Word
Study" and no Strongs lexicon is installed or no Bible module with
Strongs is installed, then a popup suggesting to add the KJV +
StrongsGreek + StrongsHebrew can be shown.

Along with this though, I'd like to let the user choose which Greek and
which Hebrew lexicon they would like to use.  I know the Xiphos repo has
something like StrongsRealGreek and StrongsRealHebrew and we also
reference the Liddell-Scott from SWORDWeb, which could be a choice for
online users... Probably others.  And with those selection options under
Settings, maybe we could add a Word Study Bible choice which let's a
user pick, say the KJV as their Strongs Bible for word studies, but
maybe they like to normally read a different Bible as their primary text.

Anway, the warning is a small change and I think will go a long way to
avoid support questions on "Why doesn't the Word Study tool work?!" and
adding the new Settings options kindof go along with that so I'd like to
get it all done in one release.

> Observations:
>
>   * Search works consistently with eBible.org modules (unlike PocketSword).
Regarding search, I had an Apple user say that search wasn't working for
him.  I haven't had a chance to look into it.  Have you been able to
search on Apple?

Bishop doesn't use CLucene, but instead just uses the internal search
features of the SWORD engine.  Most phones are fast enough to search the
entire text a Bible in an acceptable time without an indexed search. 
Strongs searches take a little longer and you can see by looking at a
Word Study and then clicking any word entry in the Word Study list for
the verse.  You should be offered the ability to search other
occurrences of that exactly Greek word and without an index, it takes a
little time to parse out the lemma information while searching the
entire text.  It's still not too bad, I think.

>   * Poetry 2nd lines are not indented, but it would be nice if they were.
Curious.  I'll try to spend time to look.  Does the same module look OK
in any other SWORD frontend?

>   * The app icon for Android is much nicer than the app icon for iOS. (The latter looks more like a Minecraft monster head.)
:) I was so happy to finally build a working binary for iOS that I
haven't even though about how to choose the icon. :)  That's the default
Cordova icon.

>   * I like the way columns without a current chapter to display disappear, making a nice seamless way to display the Hebrew OT and Greek NT next to another Bible translation.
Yes, that's exactly how I use it for my morning readings.  I try to make
myself read Greek, but I'm not good enough for that to not be a
distraction from my devotions so having the English side by side with
the original language (Old or New Testament) was my primary goal for
reading mode-- for me personally.  My Hebrew is so worthless these days
that I've though about putting an LXX module as the 3rd selected Bible
so I always get an English / Greek diglot when reading. :)  I think this
should be nice for seminary students.

>   * Support for display of Strong's numbers and visible linkage of parallel translations and/or lexicons where the word stem matches would be nice.
Yeah, that was hard to do word selects on the small screen, like we do
on SWORDWeb.  On SWORDWeb we show 3 levels of association: bold = all
words from the same stem, bold/italic = all words with the same stem and
exact morphology, bold/italic/underline = the exact same word between
two Bibles.  I am surprised how often, when I click a word, I see that
same word nearby in the chapter, but translated by a different English
word that I had no idea the author used the same word.  It has been
enlightening to discover running themes which had been previously masked
to me by translation.

Anyway, Word Study was my mobile attempt to show Strongs information,
but we do lose this 'other occurrences nearby' feature.  For Word Study
to work, you'll need a Strongs Bible as your primary (KJV is best right
now. ESV2011 kindof works but I'm curious about the markup there as
results sometimes seem odd) and you'll need to be sure to have
StrongsGreek and StrongsHebrew modules also installed.

The app is pure JavaScript.  I'd love for you to hack up a prototype of
anything you envision.  I know you have dev skills ;)

Troy

>
>
> On 03/22/2018 01:32 PM, Michael Johnson wrote:
>> Hello, Troy & all!
>>
>> After a bit of testing, I have concluded that the Bishop app is awesome. :-)
>> Its current version works well on both iOS and Android.
>> I like its Scripture display layout. OK, there is some room for improvement in poetry display, making secondary and tertiary lines indented a little more like the NIV and World English Bible official printed editions do, but other than that, most things I think of now fall firmly in the camp of feature addition instead of bug fixes; like maybe more complete localization to other user interface languages.
>>
>> The biggest flaw is not yet being in the Apple App Store for general use on iOS devices. Sure sending Troy a UDID and side loading a special compilation works for me for now, but it would get really tedious for Troy after more than just a few testers... and there are limits to how many testers you can have. I think it is at least as good as many iOS apps that are in Apple's App Store. I have an active Apple developer account, so I could submit it if you like, after I get back from the conference I am
>> enroute to, now.
>>  
>>
>> On 03/01/2018 10:26 AM, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
>>> Dear team,
>>>
>>> You all know we've been working on Cordova bindings for SWORD for quite some time now.  We now have a simple reader written in JavaScript which will run unchanged on both Android and iOS.Bishop includes an InstallMgr to auto-discover remote installation sources and let a user install SWORD content.
>>>
>>> I've kept the development code name "Bishop", my favorite android (from Aliens) and almost appropriate for a Bible app :)  I've also tacked on our boring moniker from our Windows app, "Bishop: The SWORD Project for Android".  Long name but should get more search hits.
>>>
>>> Basically, Bishop's UI has 2 basic modes:
>>>
>>>     *Reader*: which simply shows 1 chapter of up to 3 Bibles in parallel.
>>>     *Verse* *Study*: When in reader mode, as the user scrolls, one verse will always be active, when "Verse Study" is chosen from the menu, the user can then drill down into that active verse.  Verse Study has 4 tools:*
>>>     *
>>>
>>>         *Word* *Study*: shows the verse broken down word by word, showing the original Greek or Hebrew behind each word, along with a simple definition.*
>>>         Commentary*: shows all installed commentary for that verse.
>>>         *Witness* *Study*: shows all available ancient New Testament manuscript witnesses which attest to the current verse.
>>>         *Variant* *Study*: shows all variant between the manuscript witnesses for the current verse.
>>>
>>> Other features include very basic bookmarks and search.  The Android release has an initial attempt at BibleSync support to send your current verse out to all your friends running Bishop on the same network (thanks Karl!).
>>>
>>> The initial goal of Bishop was to be the thinnest client on top of the bindings, as an example and thus uses no 3rd party libraries, save jQuery.  Now that the initial release is completed and can serve as an example, we're free to improve the mobile user interface if anyone feels called to join the team and give it a shot.
>>>
>>> Installation locations follow.  It's best to let Bishop install its basic set of SWORD modules upon first run, so it has a minimal set of tools it can use to operate.  It will prompt you to do this when you first launch the application and it finds no modules installed.
>>>
>>> Android users can install the app from:
>>>
>>> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.crosswire.bishop
>>>
>>> iPhone users will need to send me their UDID for testing while we try to get through the Apple Store approval process.  I haven't even tried yet as I don't have much hope that it is "pretty" enough for them, but the download link for the iPhone binary is here:
>>>
>>> https://crosswire.org/bishop/manifest.plist
>>>
>>> https://crosswire.org/bishop.ipa
>>>
>>> The code can be had from:
>>>
>>> http://git.crosswire.org/main/bishop
>>>
>>> Please let us know what you think if you are a user, and offer your suggestions from a usability perspective.
>>>
>>> If you are a developer, please offer comments and suggest features you have a desire and are willing to add.
>>>
>>> Please give us a great rating so we show up in a search in the Play Store and let others know.  I think we have some unique feature that other app don't offer and I've been using Bishop as my morning reader for a while now.  The default fullscreen text without clutter is pleasant.
>>>
>>> Christ's best for you!
>>>
>>> Troy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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