<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div>Just looking around the Wiki, and saw the entry for making a single cross-platform front-end.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Frontends:FeatureList">http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Frontends:FeatureList</a></div><div><br></div><div>It reminded me of Larosa Johnson's "The Ultimate Bible Software Application" blog posts back in March. </div><div><pre><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://blog.trailblazinministries.com/tech-stuff/">http://blog.trailblazinministries.com/tech-stuff/</a></span></font></pre><pre><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: normal;">Briefly, he discusses a single cross-platform net-connected application with YouVersion like features, and later talks about open source and Sword. Interesting that he's discussing something better, considering he builds modules for WORDsearch, which came out on top for Windows Bible software for the layman.</span></font></pre><pre><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="http://www.fostertribe.org/biblesoftware.html">http://www.fostertribe.org/biblesoftware.html</a></span></font></pre><pre><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; white-space: normal;">~</span></font></pre><pre><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; white-space: normal; ">Functionality-wise, I can't see there every being one Bible app "to rule them all." Different apps target different audiences. </span></pre></div><div><div>Having one really good cross-platform app would be good, but he cross-platform aspect seems particularly challenging. Cross-platform GUIs always require some sacrifice.</div><div><br></div><div>Cross-platform toolkits that use native widgets still don't necessarily "feel" quite right... at least to aesthetic Mac heads like me. Maybe because they tend to use Carbon rather than Cocoa, avoiding Objective-C's runtime message dispatching, but missing out on 64-bit goodness as Apple moves further towards Cocoa. </div><div><br></div><div>Some of the tools that use native widgets:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>WxWdigets (BPBible)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lazarus (Pascal with a component library)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>RealBasic (commercial)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Runtime Revolution (commercial, interpreted)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>SWT (Eclipse)</div><div><br></div><div>Some UIs use skins instead, but try to match the look with the OS:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Java Swing</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Mono 2.0 Windows.Forms 2.0<br></div><div><br></div><div>Others go their own way:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>FLTK</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Adobe Flex</div><div><br></div><div>How does one make a single app that really "feels" at home on anything from Leopard, Ubuntu, XP, or Vista?</div><div>Is it possible?</div><div><br></div><div>- nathan</div><div><br></div></div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>---</div><div>Nathan Youngman</div><div>Web: <a href="http://www.nathany.com">http://www.nathany.com</a></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div></div></div></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>