Introduction

The Bible Reading Calendar linked in this wiki page was built using GoBibleCreator by way of some lateral thinking. There are four readings per day. It takes the reader through the whole Bible each year, the OT once and the Psalms and NT twice.

The table below describes the structural equivalences.

This illustrates how GoBible software can be used to make an application a little different than a Bible or portion of Scripture.

Is there any progress in the development of PHP for converting text file?

Not yet for PHP - but what source text did you have in mind?

I generally use Datamystic Textpipe to prepare the ThML files from various different intermediate file formats. This is more of an art than a single one-stop software solution, since there is such a wide variety of file formats for Bible markups.

If you want to discuss this in further detail, please contact me directly by private email.

David Haslam

Hi,

I'm keen on developing a bible software application for the iPhone. was wondering where I could find out more information about what i can and cannot do with the Go Bible?

I figured it would be better to work with an existing effort that has some bible texts. Any help would be good. Perhaps we could work something together?

my email is quinton84@gmail.com

Please read the wiki pages for GoBibleLicense and SourceTextFileCopyright

To avoid SPAM, please remove your email address in the above comment. I have added you as member to the Go Bible Google group.

David Haslam

Hi Quinton,

I would love to work on an iPhone Bible application. The main reason I haven't is because I don't have Mac OS X Leopard which is required for the iPhone SDK.

I'm definitely keen to work together with you on this, however, initially you may have to do most of the work until I get Leopard set up.

Implementing an iPhone version of Go Bible will probably be quite different to the Java ME version. Firstly, I think iPhone only supports ObjC development instead of Java. Secondly the device is much more capable than the phones Go Bible originally targeted so you could include more features. The main thing that Go Bible provides across platforms is a data format, however, there are some limitations to the GoBibleDataFormat. Instead it may be better to use XML as the data format (eg. ThML or OSIS), which is what GoBibleCreator uses to convert to GoBibleDataFormat.

The iPhone also has a very different UI model which would allow for some interesting forms of interaction.

The Go Bible software at the moment is somewhat stable (in that it hasn't changed too much in a while and isn't very buggy, although there are a number of identified issues). It seems that what is characterising Go Bible at the moment is international translations of the Bible. International translations have always been a priority for me rather than English translations and I think the "Go" in Go Bible implies that it is a tool for ministry in nations throughout the world. So that is my heart for the Go Bible project.

If we were going to do an iPhone version I would like it to have the same heart. That is, the focus is on getting the Bible into people's hands. (I'm surprised there isn't an iPhone Bible viewer available already, I guess there will be a few when the app store is launched)

Considering the technical differences of an iPhone version, I would think that a separate Google Code project would be applicable.

I've never written an ObjC application myself although I'm a long term Mac user so am familiar with the overall concepts and APIs.

Interestingly, I've been becoming more interested in desktop Bible applications recently and have been thinking about writing a Mac OS X Bible annotation/study/visualisation tool. But I'll also need Mac OS X Leopard so perhaps it isn't the Lord's will for me to work on anything new at the moment.

God bless,

Jolon.

Jolon,

There is already some discussion started in the SWORD Dev forum as regards Bibles for the iPhone. I suggest you join that and revisit it periodically, and/or add email alerts for specific topics.

Some of the SWORD Dev contributors have been very helpful to me, especially Peter von Kaehne, who assisted with the Farsi OPV Go Bible.

David Haslam

A discussion on the search feature has begun in the Go Bible Forum. See Request for enhanced options in Go Bible search feature

T9 input is patented. Wouldn't using this be incompatible with the Go Bible license?

Touch-screen support was suggested in http://jolon.org/vanillaforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=670 with particular reference to the Samsung F700-V

Ole has started to adapt Go Bible code to work on the OpenMoko? platform. See http://groups.google.com/group/go-bible-dev/browse_frm/thread/bb910206b9866bfa?hl=en#

Dirk has started to adapt GoBibleCreator to use USFM files as a Source-Format.

Go Bible Creator 2.3 beta is now available for testing from http://groups.google.com/group/go-bible-dev

This has support for USFM.

Troy has adapted Go Bible preferences to support multiple languages for the UI. This enhancement will be easy to merge into the code once v2.3 has been checked in.

Ole has committed the code for GoBibleOpenmoko.

One touch screen phone model is the Samsung SGH-F488. Full specification found in http://mobilezoo.biz/samsung_SGH-F488_specs?manuf=samsung&handset=SGH-F488

See this topic in the Go Bible Forum http://jolon.org/vanillaforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=697

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/amiphd/iphone-sdk-development

iPhone SDK Development by Bill Dudney, Chris Adamson, Marcel Molina

may be of interest to iPhone Bible software developers.

A vote for Two dimensional "Go to" menu with book abbreviations in a 6x11 table? enhancement.

This would really improve usability of the current version and would make finding references MUCH quicker!

>>> A vote for Two dimensional "Go to" menu with book abbreviations in a 6x11 table? enhancement.<<<

I join to this vote. I would like to implement this. Did anybody try it out?

lienok

Two dimensional "Go to" menu with book abbreviations

The challenge (apart from the coding) is that every non-English Bible would require a set of book abbreviations for the particular language.

The envisaged 6x11 table would only apply to a whole Bible that consists of a complete set of the 66 protocanonical books.

We would have to think hard about how to adapt the grid for partial collections and for other canons, e.g. Catholic Bibles that include deuterocanonical books.

Display the total number of search results at the top of the results list

This has been implemented in forthcoming v2.4.0

Pasted from an email by Stephen Denne to CrossWire? mobile-devel:

I'd created quite a bit of code years ago for palm, that worked with palmbibleplus, including playing with various verse selectors. I like the grid of books, arranged as 5 columns of 14 books, since then you get (protestant) old testament taking up 3 columns, and new testament taking up 2, and you can scan down a column of book abbreviations much more easily than scanning across.

Having them as columns left to right also seems natural as you look for books later in the bible further on the right hand side of the screen.

Jackie Chin added a new comment to 'KJV.zip' in the shared folder on box.net "How do I use it in touchscreen mode ? I can scroll it yes but not using the Go To, also, there will be no return once activated the fullscreen unless installing... should there be some kind of drop down menu for the Go To and some scrolling bar for the preference menu ?"

DFH replied, "Support for touch screen phones is still rudimentary. Go Bible was first developed well before this technology. We are still trying to catch up with the pace of new innovations, and short of dedicated programmers."

The symscroll branch of GoBibleCore supports touch screen only phones.

I am interested in Porting GoBible to the Android Platform. Where can I download the Java Source code?