[sword-devel] Creating a "SWORD-over-network" protocol for remote SWORD repo access?

[Aaron Rainbolt]

As it stands, SWORD users face some disadvantages when accessing SWORD
resources - they have to be downloaded in their entirety, installed
onto the end user's system, and then stay there for as long as the
user wishes to access them. While it is possible and even easy to copy
modules from one system to another in theory, the system that views
the modules must still *have* the modules in order to view them.

Since SWORD already is basically a universal Bible-related data access
system, it seems to me like it could be useful to take the concept one
step further - allowing access to SWORD modules over the network,
where a viewing device must only request the part of a module it wants
to view, and simply discards it when it's done with it.

Some advantages of this over what SWORD already does:

* The device used for viewing no longer has to be the device used for
storing the modules. Individuals can stand up a "SWORD server" and
then access the modules from any network-capable SWORD client on any
device.
* The device used for module storage can be located on the Internet,
allowing individuals to access a potentially large library of modules
without installation.
* Assuming a properly secured, encrypted connection can be established
and the server is not obvious as a SWORD server, individuals in
persecuted countries could potentially access SWORD modules over the
Internet, allowing them to access the Bible without leaving a trace on
their devices.
* Organizations with permission to redistribute copyrighted texts
could provide those texts via a SWORD server, allowing them to be
accessed by network-capable SWORD clients (i.e., this could
potentially allow people to legally access texts such as the ESV and
NIV in their favorite SWORD client rather than being forced to resort
to clunky websites, proprietary software, or piracy). Server-side,
open-source DRM measures could be enforced to make downloading entire
modules for offline use more difficult, providing some level of
peace-of-mind to copyright owners.

Advantages this would have over existing "access the Bible online" solutions:

* It would provide a standardized interface for accessing the Bible
and Bible-related resources over the Internet, rather than every
project coming up with its own storage conventions and network
protocols.
* People could theoretically use almost any SWORD client to access the
modules, allowing access to the Bible using a native desktop or mobile
application, rather than having to resort to a web browser, clunky
"cross-platform" (read: doesn't work quite right anywhere) app, or a
tracker-laden mess like YouVersion.
* Since the SWORD server itself would essentially be a SWORD client
that provided access to its modules over the network, one SWORD server
could daisy-chain to another one, thus acting as a proxy. This way
small, non-suspicious websites could provide access to major SWORD
servers via a proxy, making it easier to help individuals in
persecuted situations to access the Bible.
* Given the above proxying mechanism, blocking access to SWORD servers
could become very difficult, for much the same reasons why blocking
access to Matrix chat is very difficult. (In a world with unlimited
time and development resources, a full federation system could be
implemented so that anyone could access any module that anyone else
hosted... but that's almost without question overkill and impractical.
Just proxying would be cheap to implement and powerful in use.)
* Anyone could self-host a SWORD server and provide themselves, their
family, their community, or even the world easier access to the Bible
and Bible-related resources.
* Advanced features like fast Lucene search could be provided
server-side, giving a much faster search experience than almost any
modern Web-based Bible application I've used.
* If used alongside a feature like BibleSync, it could be a powerful
tool for churches and Bible studies to use. People could simply
connect to the church's SWORD server and enable BibleSync, then be
able to follow along perfectly with everyone else, with access to the
same resources that their pastor, study leader, etc. is actively
using. No prep work needed (beyond having the proper app installed and
knowing how to point it to the right server).

In the event this idea is actually worth pursuing, it seems to me like
there would be four things needed to make it a reality.

* A SWORD network protocol specification. This would probably be the
hardest thing to get right since it has to be gotten right the first
time and then only incrementally updated in the future in a
backwards-compatible manner for best results.
* An actual SWORD server implementation. Once the specification
exists, writing this should theoretically be easy.
* Server access support in the SWORD library itself. This would enable
existing SWORD clients to adopt network support with little effort.
* Adoption of the new feature by SWORD frontends. This of course is up
to (and at the discretion of) each SWORD frontend developer, but if
the SWORD library made accessing network resources act almost
identically to accessing local resources, it would hopefully be easy
to take advantage of the feature, and thus it would hopefully gain
traction.

So there's my brain-dump of all the reasons I think this is worth
doing and how I think it should be done :P Let me know what you think
and if you have any advice or feedback. This whole thing popped into
my head tonight and I just wanted to share it to see if it's worth
pursuing, or if maybe something similar to this was tried already in
the past.

Thanks for reading my wall of text. God bless.