[sword-devel] Engine personal cipher support / Nestle - Aland 28th ed. German Bible Society

[Tobias Klein]

This is great news, Troy! Thanks for following through and making it 
happen with the German Bible Society! :)
I'm wondering whether the same approach could also be used for other 
modules sold by them in their online shop ...

Best regards,
Tobias

On 29.10.19 22:42, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
> Hello frontend developers,
>
> As many of you know, we've been in talks since 1998 with the Deutsche
> Bibelgesellschaft (German Bible Society) (DBG) to distribute the
> Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament.  In 1999 they gave us official notice
> to stop distributing the text of the NA27.  As a consolation, they
> suggested we direct our users to their website where they would soon
> make the NA27 available for download for a small fee.  They have offered
> the NA27 in various software and formats from their website, but none we
> could easily and fully integrate with our engine.  Things have changed
> over the past 10 years.  CrossWire has designed and written the software
> for Aland's research institute (INTF) which produces the text of the
> Editio Critica Maior (ECM)-- the research work which the Nestle-Aland
> edition derives its text and apparatus.  Over the past couple years, we
> have pitched the idea to integrate the scholarly research tools at the
> institute with the "pocket edition" Nestle-Aland and the result of that
> is what you see in Bishop under the "Witness Study", "Variant Study:
> Variant Graph, Alignment Table, and Digital ECM (book of Acts only)"
> features.  They have been happy with these results and have agree to
> release a NA28 module for CrossWire tools, but required a few updates
> for this to happen.
>
> 1) They wanted a way to produce unique unlock keys per user which they
> would generate from their website-- which also wouldn't require
> re-cipher of the module data.
>
> 2) They needed a way to easily direct users to their website to purchase
> the unlock key when a user attempts to install the module.
>
>
> #1 was included as an update to our engine with this commit:
>
> commit f4ac4caeacd762c90c2b2cef5755bf745e3a6d58
> Author: scribe <scribe at bcd7d363-81e1-0310-97ec-a550e20fc99c>
> Date:   Sat Dec 29 21:23:25 2018 +0000
>
>      Added personalization mechanism for cipher keys
>     
>      git-svn-id: https://crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk@3614
> bcd7d363-81e1-0310-97ec-a550e20fc99c
>
> #2 was added with the inclusion of the UnlockInfo property as an
> accepted entry in the .conf file for a module.
>
>
> All this to say that I have received word that "the code generator has
> already been implemented in the online shop. The colleagues are recently
> testing the feature."
>
> I would hope this means immanent availability.
>
> As this has been an ongoing negotiation and we've received a number of
> positive replies with no final action over the years from the DBG, I've
> waited until it actually looks like they are really planning to release
> this, before getting anyone's hopes up.
>
> Good news is that I have also pitched this to the DBG as a way for them
> to keep 100% of the sale from their module, since we don't want any
> royalties, which should allow them to offer their resource to starving
> seminary students at a great discount in price.  They have taken this to
> heart and the last word I have received is that they "are considering a
> really modest price of probably as low as 10 €."  That's actually pretty
> exciting as most other modules for the NA28 which include the apparatus
> are priced around $25USD.  Plus, a seminary student will have the added
> benefit of using their unlock code on any and all of our software
> (mobile and desktop), instead of being locked into a single
> application.  It should be a good promotion for us and I expect the DBG
> website will highlight this.
>
> So, in summary, I hope this will actually happen.  I am excited by this
> and hope everyone else will be, as well.  Frontend developers: for you
> to support this, you will need to build against an engine release later
> than the commit above.  For those who insist on only building against
> release branches (completely sympathize with this), our release manager,
> Greg Hellings, offered to cherry-pick changes for a new release over the
> past holiday season, which was relatively quiet and we never supported
> him in his offer, but I am hopeful this means he might be willing to
> pull at least this patch into our release branch.  Additionally, you
> will need to support the new UnlockInfo .conf property in your
> frontend.  To see how it is used in Bishop, you can try (both iOS and
> Android are the same) to install the NA28 module from DBG publisher's
> remote module installation repository which has been added to our list
> of autodetected repositories.  The .conf file is here so you can see the
> value of the property-- which will change with appropriate text and
> link, once we receive the direct store link to the NA28 SWORD module in
> the DBG store.
>
> http://crosswire.org/ftpmirror/pub/sword/dbgraw/mods.d/na28.conf
>
> The cleanest way is up to you to popup a browser window in your frontend
> which will allow the user to navigate the purchase option in the store
> and receive the unlock key, and then to return the user back to your
> application to enter the unlock key, but you should be able to trust the
> UnlockInfo will include general text informing the user they can
> purchase an unlock key from the DGB, and that a link will be provided as
> part of that text (using our standard RTF + <a href> syntax we've used
> in .conf files for ages).
>
> Finally, if any frontend project manager wishes to test the actual NA28
> module in your frontend, email me privately and I can generate a key for
> you.  And if you'd like to add to your frontend the ECM integration to
> the INTF which you see in Bishop, you will find those webservices easily
> by having a look at the VerseStudy code here:
>
> https://git.crosswire.org/main/bishop/blob/master/www/js/versestudy.js
> (NB: methods, witnessStudy, variantGraph, alignmentTable, dECMApp)
>
> Praise God for this opportunity to make these valuable resources
> available to our users at the absolute lowest price.
>
> In Him,
>
> Troy
>
>
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