Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Okay everybody, there's a new version in extras-testing. Please test it and vote it up!

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thanks Josh. Am looking at the page but can't see where to vote?

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Oops, I posted the wrong link. I've corrected it now; here's the right one.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

My feedback:

• Settings window feels cluttered and strange, especially with install/remove translations on the right. I'd recommend putting them in the left or moving them to the select translations screen
• Use of buttons for everything tends to give it a cluttered feel. "Select Translations" window and Search sidebar could at least be a List.
• Tapping on the search field in "Select Book" causes it to switch to the main screen without doing anything
• Current Book would be a nice search option
• I wonder if there would be good ways to declutter "Select Book" and "Select Chapter" without drastically increasing scrolling.

Reading the status post, I definitely look forward to comparing verses (plugins for this could be good, like to create a gospel harmony), bookmarks, and notes.

I assume text selection for copying will eventually be supported?

Any thoughts on religious writings outside of the Bible, like from Islam, LDS, apocryphal writings, etc? I wouldn't even know if they are available in a supported format.

When I get some time later I'll get on the package page and go through the QA checklist

EDIT: Also rotation lock would be nice

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

BoM module: http://richard.esplins.org/siwi/ (may also be available somewhere in a SWORD archive--i don't recall now--the JST is commonly available FWIW).
It is mentioned on the SWORD mailing list archive that the Quran is available.

However, with the exception of the JST, these don't work right in Rapier as far as i can see and can't even be loaded in Katana because they are implemented as general books "genbooks". Currently, Katana only loads biblical texts.

Here's a post talking about genbooks (in context of Quran):
http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/s...il/020617.html

The SWORD project leads are generally antipathetic toward "cult/unorthodox" material as can readily be seen by a search of the mailing list archive. I spent some time looking at how to get better support for non-biblical texts with a similar book/chapter/verse structure and didn't make much progress due to complete unfamiliarity with SWORD and really poor/limited documentation.

I currently have a python script that screen-scrapes the Online Edition of the standard works and makes a local, link-corrected copy with custom CSS that i can then access with MicroB for my non-biblical scripture reference. That approach has about the same level of functionality as Katana at present but will be difficult to significantly improve. The hope was to modify the script to produce a module compatible with either SWORD (Katana) or some other e-book format, but there is a lack of e-book readers on Maemo with a feature set to justify the effort and a lack of a clearly superior e-book format in general--every single one involves some negative tradeoff.

There's also Thummin Reader, which is no longer maintained, which struck off on its own due to the same limitations of SWORD.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thummim's scraper has been broken for a long while. I was looking at taking over maintainership except that was a big limiting factor.

The LDS Church has focused on single sourcing its scriptures in an XML file to be used for print, online, mobile readers, etc. I don't know if that is available but there is now a web API to the scriptures. The Android and iPhone versions of Mobile Gospel Library convert everything into a preprocessed sqlite database for faster loading.

See https://tech.lds.org/wiki/index.php/...ibrary_Project

I've been tempted to make a "Mobile Gospel Library" for Maemo but have had mixed feelings of writing a targeted application over contributing somehow to a general application. I know they like having a targeted one so it can be branded with the Church's trademark and people can know its legitimate.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I emailed him about it about sixth months ago and, much later, receieved a response that he had fixed it to work with the current webpage. I didn't try it because i already had my script worked out and have been busy elsewhere, but that reader looks better than anything available. Unfortunately, it uses GTK, so i'm not inclined to spend time on it.

That's exactly my thought on the matter, which is why i was looking at SWORD. Best case scenario would be to prepare a converter to SWORD module and get the needed enhancements into SWORD so that all efforts on things i consider essential (highlighted passages, powerful search, annotations, etc.) would benefit all and be more portable. The big problem with every purpose-built reader/study app to date is lack of forward, backward, and lateral compatibilty; the risk of losing year(s) of annotations is a big turnoff that dissuades serious usage of portable scripture apps, a problem that i see as an increasingly serious handicap.

A good SWORD-based Qt study app has the potential to really resolve a lot of these issues and be useful on many platforms, but there is a lot of effort required at several levels before that can be realized.

Sorry for the OT, but perhaps the digression has been useful as a sort of vision statement for some of us interested in Katana as a potential beginning of the ultimate scripture study app on Maemo and more.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I've been waiting for Katana to come out ever since this thread started, and I was lucky enough to stumble on it. I must say, I could hardly contain my excitement.

I REALLY want to vote it up, but I've come across a few things that really should be looked at before it's extras ready.

1. Installing the Klingon Language Version (a must-have for any Bible application) seems to have deleted the English Standard Version. Reinstalling ESV was a simple matter, but I don't know why it wiped it out.

2. "Go to Chapter" should probably be something like "Go to Passage", seeing as it applies to changing books as well.

3. *feature request* It would be really nice to be able to move to the next book from the reading screen, having to go into the "Go to Chapter" section strikes me as counter-intuitive.

4. *another feature request* One of the things I liked about Rapier was the copy-paste functionality. (Even if it was really clunky) Hover mode (and gestures in general) would be awesome for that.

5. Most importantly, when hitting the kinetic bounce area on the top and bottom of the reading area, it seems to leave behind artifacts in the rebound area.

It's a wonderful application, and even though I thought some bits were a little cluttered at first, I've found it flows quite naturally to have things laid out the way they are. Kudos to everyone involved.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Klingon bible? What is the word for "charity"? :D

This is probably due to an issue i discovered. When i first installed Katana, it found and used the modules i had installed with Rapier. As soon as i used Katana to install a module, all the former modules disappeared.

What happens is that Katana (appropriately IMO) uses ~/.sword as its module directory, while Rapier uses ~/sword. Apparently Katana will see and use ~/sword until something exists in ~/.sword.

I copied the modules from ~/sword to ~/.sword and then deleted ~/sword and symlinked it to ~/.sword.

So, i guess Katana should be changed to always read modules from both if possible, or to always use ~/.sword so as to not create confusion.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

There are many words that there just is no translation for, so it just puts the English in there. I always thought it was funny that "Love" is always English in the KLV.

Symlinking ~/.sword is brilliant, I wouldn't have thought of that. Maybe it would be nice to have an install option that would do that automagically, in case you wanted to jump between Rapier and Katana. (Although I can't really imagine myself going back to Rapier now; even if it does have copy-paste functionality)

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Okay, so I'm currently on dial-up here at home.
One page takes a little more than 4 minutes to load with nothing else running in the background. This is fun! :p

So without having the time to search through all of this thread, is it possibly to compile for this Diablo?

I'm using rapier now, which is very nice. Not all too much that I find wrong with it except wishing for red text in passages that the lord speaks and maybe hardware keys for scrolling or perhaps a slight better scrolling feature.

Other than that, I'm quite happy with it but would also love to see anything else offered here by you gentlemen for the older tablets.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

The package in extras testing now has more than the required ten karma. Besides waiting for 10 days, is there anything else that needs to be done to make the package promotable to extras?

I've been continuing work in svn. Katana now has basic PDB support (no byte-shifted files, and no searching), although I've run into a few Qt/Maemo5 bugs along the way.

Once PDB support is a little more polished, I plan to switch the Select Translations screen over to use a select widget rather than buttons.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

No, that's it. You just have to remember to log in: that one always gets me.

I guess i'll have to look at the code but could you comment on how involved it was to add support for content not in a SWORD module? Which particular palm db format is it?

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

In the process of adding PDB support, I refactored a lot of the engine code, so the class interface for adding an engine is pretty simple, and there doesn't need to be much, if any, code duplication. I hope to add e-Sword format support at some point, and will probably clean up the code even more at that point.

Obviously, the code to actually read any given format will vary in complexity.

The format is the one used by Palm Bible+, symbianbible, etc. It's a pretty common format, though completely undocumented.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thank you qole. :)

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Tried to find some documentation on the Palm Bible+ format and was unsuccessful. Do you have any link to documentation on the format

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Well, as I said, it's completely undocumented. :-) I'll try to add some documentation to katana source code soon.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Well, folks, Katana is in extras!

In related news, I'm close to uploading a new version to extras-devel. This version will include PDB support and lots of UI improvements (scrolling flakiness, reducing the number of buttons, etc.)

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Is the Bible just in English or other languages are available?

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Really great jobs everyone, I've been looking for a bible-reader for a while.

Some suggestions/comments:
- The scrolling is very unstable (in the bible install screen)
- Within the read-screen, the scrolling is good, but it needs a scroll bar.
- Also, a page up/down command would be nice (maybe an implementation similar to fbreader would be nice, where you touch the top-half of the screen to go up a page, etc. (possibly fbreader's only redeeming quality...) [I know the space bar does this, but I don't want to open the keyboard every time]
- I should be able to jump back to a previous book easily (i.e. I should be able to scroll from Exodus to Genesis seamlessly.
- The program is a bit laggy overall.

Once again, these are meant as constructive criticisms not insults, and I'd be happy to help out in any way.

PS: @Patroclo, You can select to download bibles of different languages at the install screen, or from Settings->Install Translations->Language

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

jmc8501, thanks for the feedback. Some questions:
- What do you mean by "unstable" scrolling?
- Are there specific places where the reader feels laggy?

The idea behind Katana is that it's "infinite-scroll" - i.e. you can scroll forever. Having to stop at the end of a book doesn't fit in with that, and I'm planning to remove that limitation. So, with infinite scroll, scrollbars don't really make sense.

You can actually use the volume rocker to page up/down. This is especially nice in portrait mode, because you can hold the phone in your right hand and your thumb falls right on the rocker. That's the way that I use Katana 90% of the time.

Hope that helps!

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I asked this before, but is there any possibility on releasing this for Diablo as well?

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Katana is built on Qt 4.6, and the developers of Qt have not ported it to Diablo. So until Qt 4.6 is ported to Diablo, the answer is unfortunately no.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Poopers. :(

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Here are a few screenshots of the new UI:
Attachment 11703

Attachment 11704

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

With 0.4.0 (unsure about previous versions) if I start the app with no texts, it segfaults. Just an FYI as most people won't have texts when they first start it.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thanks a million, I tried using PDB bible versions and it worked. Once you copy the files to MyDocs, it automatically shows in the "Select Translation" option. I also did a search and that also worked.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Okay, I know that religion can be a little touchy in these forums and didn't want to start a new thread on this.

But yeah, anyone have some good websites or internet radio stations you would be willing to share with me?

Here's one that I found to be quite excellent.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I don't know if you uploaded it yet but I downloaded and installed. After opening it, it starts to load, but never load all the way. Just crashes every time I open it.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thanks heaps for all the work you've put into katana - it's really turning into a nice, simple, polished app.

Something I'd love to see in a future version would be an option to hide verse numbers and the verse cross references. Something like a 'reading mode', so all that's displayed is the text with chapter numbers. I've always found that I tend to get distracted easily by any extra data, so something like this would really help me focus when I'm reading :)

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

You will not find any. The format used in bible plus is the same used in an older palm bible reader originally developed by a guy named Poetry Poon, who has long since left the mobile scene. In general, the PDB or palm database format, was generally used across all palm OS devices, and it was largely undocumented.

When applications, such as Olive Tree's bible reader, added DRM features, this too was not documented. And I am pretty sure that they are not sharing that now since they use PDB files still as a wrapper for much of their mobile bibles, and the DRM is locked to the file and the reader. I know they keep tabs on this thread, and might have something to contribute if the project benefits them - hence the early discussions on creating a closed source module for folks like Olive Tree - but overall, I wouldn't wait.

Nice to see this project still going. Good to know that my reference of it during Uplinq could be met with work still happening.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

There is a bug in Katana is you follow the below Steps:
1. Open Katana
2. Select Jubilee 2000 bible
3. Search for "Love" keyword
4. Search results are shown
5. Select a search result example Psalms

The app will crash and when you try to open next time also it just loads and closes again

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I uploaded a new version (0.4.1) which should fix this.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

leojab, I'm not able to duplicate this problem. How did you install the Jubilee 2000 translation? Also, what version are you using? You can tell by going to Select Translation. Do the translations show up as buttons, or list items?

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Thank you joshn53 for such a great app.
The issue I reported seems to have been resolved in the new Katana v0.4.1
The Jubilee bible version that I used earlier was from rapier app

I would like to suggest the following features if it is fine
1. In case of a search, when there is a book having only one chapter then it can go directly to that chapter rather then displaying option to select "1"
2. Option to select text for copy paste
3. Option to add certain verses to a favorite tab with category
4. While searching within book chapter, we have the ability to type numbers
5. Ability to highlight certain verses from favorite tab

Once again, thanks for all the time and effort.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Ha! I'd actually encountered this myself and fixed it in SVN already. :-)

I've uploaded a new version (0.4.2) into extras-devel. Unless you all find bugs in it, I'll likely push it into extras-testing soon.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I tried to check the version of Katana installed and noticed that there was no option to view this in the application.

I think an about section would be useful.

Thanks

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Ok, an infinite scroll would certainly preclude scroll bars, so that's fine. And the volume rocker as page turn is really nice :)

The buggy scrolling isn't within the actual reader, but only when installing bibles - it's the sensitivity that makes it react badly to input. For instance, scrolling slowly will not move a lot, but a bit more quickly and it will jump all over the place. Also, I recommend that the text wraps here as opposed to allowing horizontal scrolling.

The lag issue happens towards the end of a scroll, or after scrolling more than just a few pages. But I was mostly referring to a lag when opening the menus or settings, etc. (especially the first time, where it is very noticeable).

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

I have to retract what I said about scrolling within the bibles themselves - it is very smooth and works well. However, everything else, especially about scrolling in the install screen is still valid.

Re: Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)
 

Any possibility of an option to disable automatic rotation? Got so used to the N900 not having portrait support that I always disable automatic rotation. Don't like it going into portait mode when I didn't intend to.