On 07/04/2013 02:27 PM, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
On 07/04/2013 08:45 PM, Greg Hellings wrote:



On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Troy A. Griffitts <scr...@crosswire.org <mailto:scr...@crosswire.org>> wrote:

    Not to insult anyone-- please don't feel insulted...

    But what exactly does basing code off of Bibletime instead of
    SWORD give you?  Are any of these things worth having in the
    engine itself?


Primarily:
1) Translation between char*/SWBuf and QString, plus adding QObject and additional helpers that Qt offers. This is quite possibly worth having in the engine, but every time I've asked the BibleTime guys if they want a minimal Qt-Sword binding in the engine they have decided that it is unnecessary for BT's specific purposes. I'd still be happy to help get this much functionality into the engine if we're going to have now 3 frontends leveraging Qt.

I'm happy to ifdef QT some stuff like:

SWKey::SWKey(const QString &other) : SWKey((const char *)other.toUtf8()) {} SWBuf::SWBuf(const QString &other) : SWBuf((const char *)other.toUtf8()) {}

These two should make things flow mostly transparently Qt and the SWORD engine, since SWBuf and SWKey can already cast themselves to a const char * and QString can be constructed from a const char *. It was simply the const temporaries we count on which would have needed these casts, for example:

QString key = "John.3.16";

kjv->setText(key);

This last line would not have worked because setKey takes a const SWKey &. It works seamlessly with a const char * because a temporary can be constructed because of the SWKey(const char *) c-tor, but there is not currently a SWKey(const QString &) to allow a temporary to be constructed from a QString.


2) An improved CLucene search has long been something that BibleTime touts - the index covers more fields and metadata than Sword's CLucene index.

Yes, I've seen the ability to search on 'footnotes' and 'headings', but didn't feel those were worth adding right now, but tried to convince the BT developers to help me modularize the search framework to allow a 'search field' plugin mechanism-- probably simply a new filter type, and set of filters which could pull the desired field data from the buffer, then they could add plugins for their footnotes and headings and anything else they wanted and frontend could choose which fields they wanted to include when building indexes. There was no success in that, but they simply wanted to re-write basically the exact same code we have for building CLucene indexes, but including their additional fields.


This is probably worth having, but has been summarily rejected by you in the past because there would be no way of detecting Old Index vs New Index as current indexes are unversioned (why that itself couldn't serve as the flag for old vs new following the addition of an index version field, I'm not sure).

You are mistaken.


You've also given the impression that the CLucene indexes are not a high priority for you since you have the brute force search available.

I use the CLucene indexes all the time. They are great for some things. I have tried to convince people that they aren't necessary for 90% of searches because our unindexed search of an entire Bible is optimized to return results in under a few seconds on most hardware (probably including most mobile handsets these days).



3) An entirely rewritten set of OSIS filters, at the very least. Whether these are better or not, I have no opinion of, although I have found BibleTime's filters more understandable.

Yes, but re-written isn't necessarily a feature. We add support for new things all the time in our filters. Are the Bibletime filters updated as well? Again, this is important to me: I would love for all the projects which render to HTML to agree on what they would like to see as the HTML output from the filters and work together on the new XHTML filter set in the engine so we can all share in each other's improvements.

4) Potentially reusable widgets in some places, for common functionality like the Install Manager, where a redesign may or may not be necessary for some of it.


Yes, resusable GUI components are useful but not something I think we would put into the engine. Maybe a 'contrib/qt folder?


On 07/04/2013 09:35 PM, Gary Holmlund wrote:

I am definitely leveraging BibleTime backend code to install works

So, a Qt UI using the SWORD InstallMgr facility? This is good but falls under #4 from Greg, above.
I am not using the Qt install UI from BibleTime. I am using the Qt Models that essentially wrap the installation information up so it can be used by various Qt UI widgets or QML. There is also thread management I am using during the install.

and the config system for dealing with user preferences.

Is this different than SWConfig? Probably using a QSettings? How is this different than just using stock SWConfig or QSettings? Does it remember common things the user might store for SWORD, like which option filters are turned on? and then reset them when the app starts back up? This could possibly be useful in the engine, though I would guess most frontend developers would want to micromanage this and also have more than what we might decide to track in the engine. Not sure we could come to some consensus for a useful implementation projects would adopt.
I am talking about a layer above QSettings. It manages sessions which include things like opening windows to the same locations and references as when BibleTime was last used. The user can also save or restore sessions. It also handles fonts and fonts sizes for each language and is integrated with the filters that render the html. It also handles keyboard shortcuts, previous search terms, etc. It would be to specific for sword functionality.


The filters also provide parallel viewing of passages in a single window.

This would be nice to have: a display class which could produce parallel HTML for multiple modules.


The fact that the BibleTime backend converts to QString, etc. is a big savings for a Qt app.

Greg also mentioned this above.  Would the additions I mention help?
Greg has more experience with the interface to sword. Perhaps he will comment on this.


Thanks for the comments Greg and Gary!


Troy

Troy



Those are just some of the things I know of that could be leveraged, in addition to having the differences of opinion and strategy you talk about below.

--Greg


    I have looked at the backend 'wrappers' in Bibletime around SWORD
    a few years back and I was disappointed for a number of reasons--
    and so as not to insult anyone-- primarily because they didn't
    add any value at all, but only 'shielded' developers from using
    the engine directly.

    I have no idea if this is still the case.  I get the impression
    that Bibletime, itself, has been re-written a number of times and
    I'm guessing this includes the 'backend' wrappers as well.

    My hope is that if there are any features that are usable by
    multiple frontend, then we should add these into the engine, if
    it makes sense.  Again, in an attempt to stop this thread from
    becoming a defense of the Bibletime code or a defense of a
    'methodology for an API interface (e.g., stateful vs. stateless
    container classes) and from degrading into insulting each other,
    I have not commented on the quality of the Bibletime code.  I am
    simply stating that I don't know what

    * solid, additional features *

    are gained from using the Bibletime base for starting a new
    frontend instead of the SWORD code directly, and if there are
    any, can we add these into the engine?


    Troy




    On 07/04/2013 08:17 PM, Israel wrote:

        Great!!  I will post the git page (to the uBible Developers)
        if you want me too, or you can head over to
        https://github.com/uBible/uBible/issues/1
        and post the info yourself if you want.
        We have been discussing using Bible Time's backend because
        @Mark Trompell  suggested it.
        You can e-mail me off list if you'd like, or post on the
        Github page...


        On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:22:17 -0700
        Gary Holmlund <gary.holml...@gmail.com
        <mailto:gary.holml...@gmail.com>> wrote:

            I am currently working on a second frontend for BibleTime
            that uses QML.
            It is a work in progress and I have some basic features
            up and working.
            Bibles, Commentaries, and Books can be read in multiple
            windows. The
            windows can be tabbed or split views of the screen. The
            install process
            for bibles, etc. is working.

            It requires Qt  5.1 and compiles on linux (ubuntu,
            fedora, etc.). I am
            looking into cross compiling onto android right now. Qt
            is not making
            this easy because they don't support cmake builds for
            android.

            I have it in a private git repository right now, but
            expect to put it
            into the main BibleTime git repository soon. Help with
            this would be
            welcome.

            Gary Holmlund
            gary.holml...@gmail.com <mailto:gary.holml...@gmail.com>


            On 07/04/2013 06:25 AM, Israel wrote:

                It uses QML, so it is part of Qt.  I will bring this
                up to the others
                and see what they think about it all.
                It may be a good idea.  Anyhow we are designing an
                interface at the
                moment to get the features we want, using what
                capabilities QML has,
                and designing it to be fully integrated with the
                Ubuntu Touch
                ecosystem.  There are some things about using Bible
                Time that may make
                this
                hard, but there very well may be some things we might
                be able to utilize.
                Thanks!

                On 07/04/2013 12:15 AM, Mark Trompell wrote:

                    On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 2:04 AM, Israel
                    <israeld...@gmail.com
                    <mailto:israeld...@gmail.com>> wrote:

                        Hi everyone,
                        There are a few of us who have banded
                        together to start work on a
                        Ubuntu
                        Touch SWORD app.  Is anyone else working on one?

                    AFAIK Ubuntu touch uses qt, so maybe just another
                    UI Frontent to
                    bibletime would do fine,
                    with the advantage of being easily portable to
                    mer/nemo/sailfish(jolla).

                        If anyone is interested please join us on github.
                        https://github.com/uBible
                        We are currently in the process of working
                        out the beginning
                        details, such
                        as UI setup, features, etc....
                        May the Lord Jesus bless you all!

-- Regards


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