Hymns on N900
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I'm happy to announce that Hymns is now in Extras-devel.
Attachment 12076 What is it? This is an extremely simple Qt app for those who like to sing and/or are LDS ("Mormons"). From the package description: Quote:
Known problems:
In spite of limitations, it's come in handy in the months i've had it on my N900. |
Re: Hymns on N900
Great idea I must say. Do you have to be a Mormon to use it though? Can you import Christian Hymns into it? It would be very useful to me if it did..
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Re: Hymns on N900
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If someone prepares another hymnal PDF, i will help adapting the code to the purpose. Keep in mind copyright restrictions. In this case, a provision is made by the holder for distributing the hymns for incidental, noncommercial use, which i believe covers this app in Extras-*. I'm not sure what restrictions are placed on other hymnals. |
Re: Hymns on N900
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I hadn't thought about this sort of app before but now you have mentioned it this would be pretty valuable for me as I have to select hymns for services sometimes at the last minute so this sort of thing would be great. Or just to be able to praise God through a hymn wherever I am. Cool! |
Re: Hymns on N900
Flandry awesome stuff. Do you know if there is any scriptures or LDS manual support coming down the line. At the site pretty much EVERYTHING BUT maemo already has a native player.
On my PDA a while back I used YancyWare and it was awesome, you could hightlight, annotate, bookmark, etc. Thanks for this! 2d |
Re: Hymns on N900
2 Attachment(s)
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The audio editions of the scriptures and conference talks can be downloaded and listened to in nQa Audiobook Player, or streamed. There are several ways of tuning into streams. Attachment 12078 Katana is a nice little Bible reader--presently it's just that (a Bible reader, not a Bible study tool). For the other Standard Works, there's the Web Edition if you have a data plan or wifi. I don't have a data plan and don't like waiting for page downloads, so i have used a script to pull down a full copy, strip out the cross links and references, and reformat for a small screen. I have bookmarks to this local copy in MyDocs in MicroB (i keep them on my desktop so i can just pop open to the place i was at), and it works fine to read scriptures this way. Navigating between books isn't the easiest, though. Attachment 12077 Studying is a different matter, though. There's no ebook reader on the N900 that can do useful annotations (not considering PDF as an ebook format). SWORD, which is used as the engine for Katana, has a lot of potential, but is currently not really able to handle other books with the degree of control it does Bible translations, and in Katana only provides the text so far, no commentaries or concordance or anything. Rant mode The problem with Yanceyware and the other half-dozen boom-and-bust LDS-specific scripture readers is that they all used their own proprietary formats. To make matters worse, a couple of them were temporarily adopted by church media as supported formats, only to be dropped later due to changing device landscape and discontinued software (and internal policy changes, no doubt). Thus, we're left, after over 10 years of PDA scripture readers, with almost no progress toward a single, multiplatform, robust reader. What a lot of wasted effort... The recent release of official apps for Android, WinCE, and iPhone was a surprise, but i'm not really that optimistic it's going to amount to anything different in the long run--this isn't the first episode of this i've seen or my only experience with church IT--and it doesn't help for those not in mainstream OSes. I haven't had time to look at feedback to see what the apps are like, but it's definitely a nice option for many people where there may have been none before. Annotations in a reader are only useful if the reader (and annotations with it) doesn't disappear after a year or two or four. This is why all those commercial proprietary readers over the years really peeve me (not to mention in some cases IMO violated the copyrights of the church) and i've actually not patronized any of them. Plucker format has been supported consistently since PalmOS in about 1999 and whatever PDA i've carried since, but still the annotations, not being part of the format, did not fare so well. I guess that's all to say that annotations and highlighting and anything besides basic reading capability are all but pointless on mobiles unless it uses an open, common format that is likely to survive that single app and platform. No pent-up frustration over past abandoned annotations here; no sir. :p |
Re: Hymns on N900
Flandry, I understand your frustration having suffered some of that myself. I was using a large pdf file before as a means to read the scriptures, but it took forever to load, and I found that not knowing the exact page you wanted to go to, it would take FOREVER to get there.
Heres to hoping their IT staff will give us a linux version that can be retooled for arm and the Maemo environment. 2d |
Re: Hymns on N900
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I am also interested in other apps. Mobile Member seems like a bad idea when you can integrate with the system :). The current system does not seem like you can easily provide new contact backends and I would have to go with syncing. Qt has/will have a contact manager system that I could plug an engine into for ward lists but unfortunately it doesn't look like it'll be supported on Meego for a while. I'm unsure what it would take for an extra calendar backend but sync is always an option. I can't remember what other features it has that would be interesting. As for scriptures I am mixed about whether to write a stand alone app or adding it as a backend to Katana. Quote:
I'm a bit more hopeful with the Church taking a stance of providing a web API and allowing people to create apps at their pleasure. I would prefer they would provide stock HTML5 apps for everything as that would work on all platforms and provide most of the basic functionality available. |
Re: Hymns on N900
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Re: Hymns on N900
epage, while I'm sure it being officially released would be great, but also would be nice to get the mormon channel already. I've been trying to get that streaming for quite some time now. No dice of course.
I imagine Katana with a backend would be easier to work on. Of course if you want to do the whole shi-bang and incorporate a annotation, notes, and highlighting option, I would be whole hardly eagerly anticipating it's completion. I've thought about working on one myself, but just don't have enough time. At any rate, thanks for your contributions thus far! 2d |
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