Notices

Wow I really got chocked when I saw read "Bible app"
Maybe it is just me that never have met anyone who believe in religion?

Are you an ordained minister that works in a hospital chapel?

Damn, I'm in the wrong one, then.

Seriously? Where are you from? I am just curious... I'm not particularly religious, and only really pray when my Grandma tells me to or when I'm at the Temple, but still...

Alright, it's a big fail for the automatic "Previous thread's you might like" system here. I should have searched for "Bible" before starting this thread--don't know how i missed the other one. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the information is pretty parallel between the two.

As i mentioned in the OP, my main criteria are that the scripture is available offline and easily marked/annotated, as well as searched. I use almost exclusively the KJV, but wouldn't mind having access to the NSRV. From the few people that have replied with their needs, it seems like that may be true of the majority.

Some Options
Here is what i've considered so far for those with technical inclination: after looking in some detail at the more popular and modern etext formats, such as epub, i concluded that making a distinction from a conventional webpage is fairly silly (epub is based on XML and similar to the XHTML standard for web pages). For my purposes some DOM-modifying scripts (a la GreaseMonkey) sitting on top of the browser and a mechanism to save the annotations might be the best of all worlds. The Shiftspace project uses GreaseMonkey and a database server to accomplish just that. It doesn't look like the GreaseMonkey add-on for MicroB has been updated for Maemo5. I don't know if it will be.

Because i don't currently have a Maemo tablet, i haven't tried out any of the previous options in this context. Some information from those who have would be useful.

For example, it may also be that FBReader has improved annotation capabilities since last time i checked it out (long ago). Anyone tried?

I haven't used Rapier. Does it support some type of annotation and markup?

I always wanted the Mobipocket ebook reader software to be ported to my Maemo devices. Several good Bibles (including a nice KJV with hyperlinked Strong's concordance...my personal fave) and religious research text there. Then this wouldn't be an issue. As Amazon now owns them, (and Mobipocket conflicts with an existing product the are pushing), I doubt we will see future development here.

[offtopic] Well, I work in many places: I'm an ordained methodist minister, but I work in healthcare specialising in mental health and learning disabilities. So I spend some of my time in a mental hospital, some visiting my clients when they end up in a physical hospital, and some visiting them in home or day-centrs. I also live in a part of the world where any sort of gprs is patchy, so I need things like basic apps to work offline.[/off topic]

We have two threads running on this now... so sounds like people are going to solve my problem. Thank you!!!

Much to the chagrin of the civilized world, Amazon made up a new proprietary format for the Kindle based on mobi. The Mobi reader itself was never available for Linux, so it was inherently limited from the start. Such is the hazard of proprietary formats, sadly.

I noticed that mobi had a built-in freeform annotation capability, which seems promising at first glance, but never provided a way to export the custom content. As such, it wouldn't be something i'd want to use.

I think one of the challenges to this is just how many free, competing, and decent options are floating around due to the device and ebook format carnage.

Sounds like you do good work down there in Cornwall. I hope that something works out for you with this Bible app.

I'm just building the existing software on Fedora to see where we stand. I'm compiling CLucene, Sword and a program called BibleTime to see how it all fits together and what the dependencies are....then we'll see how feasible it is to port across to Maemo5

I'm impressed. Maybe one day (when I have learned all the other things on my list) I could learn some basic coding. I've always depended on other people writing programmes: I used Palm Bible, Olive Tree and a very simple java Bible (which is actually not very useable, like most things on java!)

Thank you to everyone taking this on!