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

Sat Jul 13 12:18:30 EDT 2024

On 7/13/24 03:11, Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> You can ask for parts via the study application . I do not think anyone has yet 
> decided to build an app around that. But I see no reason why not. It probably 
> needs dusting off and some further work to make more universally useful, but it 
> is uo and running and always available.
I think by "the study application" you probably mean SWORDWeb?

I briefly glanced at some of the code. It looks like it's doing more or less what I imagined - one computer calls SWORD methods that access module information on another computer. It seems to be using CORBA for this.

I can see some advantages here:

* The protocol already exists and works in active use, which is a huge bonus.
* The server already exists and is short, simple, and already a part of SWORD itself.
* Since it's part of SWORD, all of the library support work has already been done.
* Now we just need people to stand up servers and get clients to use it!

But... therein lies the sticky part. How to use this?

I don't really like that the system uses CORBA because it means that any dev who wanted to implement network support in their SWORD frontend would have to add dependencies for CORBA support, and then potentially restructure their code to create and use CORBA objects rather than normal SWORD objects when using SWORD over the network. That would require a potentially significant amount of effort since now every single place in the application that uses SWORD objects has to do something like "if ( usingNetwork ) { mgr = makeCorbaSwordMgr(); } else { mgr = makeNormalSwordMgr(); }" or something similar. The complexity this would introduce could potentially be very significant and result in low adoption of the feature (i.e., this may be why SWORDWeb is the only thing that uses this). Then you have to add on error handling considerations in the event of a network failure (something which clients would have to do themselves rather than SWORD being able to do for them), which adds
another layer of complexity.

As for the server side of things, proxying is no longer something that can be done by just chaining servers. You'd have to have a real proxy server using a protocol like SOCKS5 or something rather than just having a SWORD server that used another SWORD server as its backend.

Some of the above problems I guess could be solved by writing support for accessing modules over CORBA directly into the SWORD library. It wouldn't solve the proxying issue, and it wouldn't solve the need for an extra build dependency, but it might solve the complexity problems for clients. Not sure how practical or efficient this would be, but it could work.
> Sent from Outlook for iOS <https://aka.ms/o0ukef>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* sword-devel <sword-devel-bounces at crosswire.org> on behalf of Aaron 
> Rainbolt <arraybolt3 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Saturday, July 13, 2024 5:40 AM
> *To:* SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
> *Subject:* [sword-devel] Creating a "SWORD-over-network" protocol for remote 
> SWORD repo access?
> 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.
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page