Hi Greg, AndBible has always been able to display Psalm 119, even on low powered devices, and many people say that, far from being slow, it is very responsive. I can only think that Greg was getting confused with some other bible software.
Martin On 19 October 2011 19:29, Greg Hellings <greg.helli...@gmail.com> wrote: > Some time ago David pointed out the SIL Pathway project, which is a > plugin for the Paratext. Paratext is a popular scripture translation > editor which is available from the United Bible Societes > (http://paratext.ubs-translations.org/) and is popularly used within > Wycliffe Bible Translators. Paratext, from what I understand, natively > operates in USFM for saving and editing files. Pathway is an FOSS > plugin (http://code.google.com/p/pathway/) that SIL has developed for > use with Paratext and FieldWorks which will facilitate digital > publishing of works out of Paratext and into various media. It is > mainly developed to help streamline the process of export and > encourage the translators to consider things like copyright, licensing > and DRM. It supports export at present to GoBible, PDF, E-Book (epub), > Logos and Open Document Text (OpenOffice/LibreOffice). For the GoBible > export, Pathway will actually create the entire .jar file ready for > directly loading onto a cell phone. > > David had expressed surprise at why there was not method to export to > a SWORD module but there was a method for GoBible export. I was down > at the Wycliffe/SIL center in Dallas yesterday for the finale of their > biennial Bible Translation conference. While there I had a chance to > sit in on a talk being given about the uses of Pathway, its purposes > and its aid to the WBT community. Afterwards I got to speak with Greg > Trihus, who is the lead of that project about the absence of SWORD > export. His comments were quite illuminating. > > The real thrust of the Pathway project is getting the scriptures into > an electronic form that is useful for distribution on mobile devices > or for print. As such they support GoBible for low-end machines, > E-Book and Logos for smart phones, ODT for to-print media and PDF to > cover all of the above. Several people in the discussion asked about > getting the scriptures into a form where they could directly enter a > scripture reference rather than having to scroll through an ebook or > PDF on a smartphone (the Logos option supports that, but involves > several more steps for the content author who needs to pass the file > through the hands of several people at SIL and then on to Logos so the > work can be hosted in the official Logos content system). Greg told me > that he had considered the Android mobile options - since many of the > target people with smart phones would be Android users - but when he > had tested AndBible it had been woefully slow and had even crashed > when opening longer passages like Psalms 119. Therefore he had avoided > putting his own human resources onto developing a SWORD format > exporter and was not advertising that through the Pathway project. He > did leave me with a few action points which he would love to see: > > 1) Since Pathway is open source, he would welcome anyone from our > community who wanted to develop a Paratext/Fieldworks -> SWORD > converter. The export is done through an XHTML/CSS pathway, and they > are supporting any form of output, not just scriptures. This would > include commentaries, dictionaries and general papers/books. Pathway > is written in C#, so if there are any C# developers around looking for > something to do, this would be a highly desired project which wouldn't > be another "Just write a front-end in my language because I want to" > contribution to both world-wide scripture distribution and CrossWire. > > 2) Improve the quality of AndBible (JSword based?) and/or Bishop > (Troy's proof-of-concept frontend based on the SWORD library with Java > bindings). There is a round-about way that SIL can publish these > scriptures to the YouVersion application framework, but YouVersion > does not incorporate any linkages with Dictionaries. Greg expressed a > strong desire to see SWORD formats supported due to our ability to > closely integrate a text with a lexicon/dictionary - a sister text > which almost all WBT translation projects will develop in parallel > with their scripture translation. Those of us over in the BibleTime > world are also hoping to eventually support mobile versions of > BibleTime, but the time frame for those is definitely long term since > it would involve a major refactoring effort on BT to separate the > backend code from the GUI portions before any work could begin on a > mobile UI based on Qt. > > 3) Help with the C# bindings for SWORD. I know some people have talked > about them in the past, but I don't know what state they might be in. > Since Pathway is written in C#, it would be a great help to anyone > writing a SWORD export path if they could access the engine bindings > directly through C# rather than having to dump to a file and somehow > invoke a copy of the utilities. The people who are interested in > using Pathway are incredibly illiterate when it comes to technology - > most of them weren't even able to identify the differences between a > smart phone and a "feature phone". So any export would need to write > out an entire module, ready to be uploaded directly to a hosting > location (or possibly a single ZIP archive which could be emailed to a > technical member of SIL by the translator for hosting). Our SWIG > bindings are OK and already in use for Python and Perl, and SWIG > supports C#, so hopefully getting them working would not be a huge > burden for someone. As the current pumpkin holder for SWIG I am > willing to work with anyone who wants to tackle adding C# to the set. > I don't work in C# at all, so I can't touch that myself. > > Greg's final comment was along the lines of, "There is desire and need > for SWORD support in Pathway, but no one is asking for it because they > don't realize they need and desire it." That sentiment is in line with > the (extensive) questions I heard after the presentation. I have > passed on to him information about PocketSword, because they do also > want to support the iOS platform and he was not aware of PocketSword's > presence there. I would encourage anyone with fingers in these areas > or a desire to help on any of these action points to take them up > (including putting them on a list of available projects on the wiki, > David, if there is such a page?). SIL did not overlook us because they > don't want to support us or because they are unaware of us - there > were just some technical challenges. > > --Greg > > _______________________________________________ > sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel@crosswire.org > http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel > Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page >
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