22 replies to this topic

[patchworkid]

hi Dsaw,

I guess people want e-Sword to be like the Word.

the categorised topics as it was suggested.

What I use e-SWord is good enough, but to have scripture pop-ups in bibles, pictures to be added in Commentaries and Dictionaries would be great.

thanks
Patchworkid

[APsit190]

Hello Stephen,
Since you bring up The Word: I wonder why you feel that it has inferior support than eSword, i think quite the opposite is true:

• it has a super-active user forum that is directly accessible from the main site and from within the software itself!. No need to search for 3rd party sites (no offense to the EXCELLENT biblesupport.com site, i think it's great and i appreciate all the help i have found here)
• it provides official email support
• the author of the software is present in the forums and answers even the most technical questions in a quick and precise manner.

What exactly is it that you feel is missing here? How does this compare to the official eSword support? Do you have a bad personal experience there? Have you personally performed an objective comparison on the support of the 2 products?

Concerning third party resource modules:
I think both The Word and eSword have the same number of official modules (more or less, didn't count, pls do it and come back if you have the time).
I agree, eSword has more user mods. But i know that both programs have converters that can be used to converts modules with a few clicks (ignoring the thousands already available). So I assume we are talking now about the ones beyond those readily available (which are thousands for both programs).
But allow me one more thought pls: You are advocating the usefulness for the 'average user': how the average use will be interested in the 'thousands' of extra resources that are available for eSword? We are talking about the 'average' user here, correct? And at the same time this 'average' user will have no interest in the 'bells and whistles' in functionality to organize these resources in collections in order to view and search them? Hmm...


eSword is not bad, it's quite good actually. But eSword does lack against The Word significantly. This is the truth, but this is not a reason to ditch it. We are Christians and should be able to speak the truth. We don't ditch a piece of software when a better one gets out for several reasons:

• Because we are used to it
• Because we have invested time to learn it
• Because we have invested money in resources
• Because we are humans and we have personal preferences (and we tend to support them in a subjective way ).

There is place for several Bible applications out there, and this is good. We shouldn't get too dogmatic and we shouldn't misrepresent one over the either because of personal preference. We should speak the truth and try to be objective, as much as our fallen human nature will allow us.


This is a great thing. You shouldn't change because you are happy with it. I use The Word because i find eSword too restrictive and i find The Word too darn easy to use and very clean and quick, and overall a much better program. I shouldn't change either. But when we are trying to talk about either, let us try to present things as they are and let us each try to help each of the two applications improve so they can BOTH serve their communities in a better way!

Blessings,
Dan

Hi Dan,
Actually, I agree with you about the fact that the Word has more features than e-Sword, and I don't criticize them. But all these nice features that the Word has are mere bless and whistles, and for what they do, they actually take up memory space to use.

Compare that against a program like e-Sword, that doesn't have features. e-Sword is a smaller program and uses less memory. This would make (in theory) a faster program.

The Word is an MDI (Multiple Display Interface) program, meaning, that it has multiple windows which are "floating" thus requiring more memory resources to run. As where e-Sword is an SDI (Single Display Interface) program, meaning that it has just one display of the entire interface that has "locked" in views ("windows") which has a "drag and drop" capability. An SDI program takes less memory resources, thus, again (in theory) uses less memory to run, and makes the program faster. A Lean, Mean, fighting machine.

Its also important to note that when something new is added to a program (irrespective of what it is), it requires more code for the additional components. This increases the file size of the program which then affects the performance.

Where software is affected by all the bells and whistles put in it is called Bloatware because of its slowness in its performance. Its here I'd like to see a bench test done to compare the speed and processing performance between the different Bible programs and see just how well The Word stacks up against e-Sword and vice versa.

Blessings,
Stephen (Php 1:21).

Edited by APsit190, 22 December 2011 - 03:59 PM.

[pfpeller]

E sword is a great program and theWord is a great program. I have been blessed by both.

As far as speed goes, there is no comparison, theWord is much faster than e sword. I have no idea the technical reason. For some reason, the programmer of theWord was able to add all these extra features without sacrificing performance. I do not think we are comparing apples to apples here. As far as I know, theWord has been written with a different programming language.

There are many of us who want the extra features that theWord has and there are many who are happy with what e sword has. This is fine. I am not sure why we need to keep debating it.