Look at the "free" Bible study programs there are, and compare the user support they have against e-Sword, count the number of resource modules (both official and third party) they have against e-Sword and etc. These programs could be regarded as way better than e-Sword as to their power of what they can do, yet it appears they don't have the user and user support that e-Sword has. The Word seems to be about the only other one, but is a relative second to e-Sword in user support and third party resource modules. So, for all what e-Sword doesn't have, and what users don't use, its seems to me to be streaks ahead of the others. So what makes e-Sword like that to where people seem to use it despite what it lacks?
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...
If e-Sword (from what I seem to see) is that bad, and seriously lacks in features against other Bible software, why use it? Why not ditch it? With all these other betterprograms, why keep e-Sword and not use them?
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.
I use e-Sword not for its bells and whistles, as I really don't care about them, I use it because its that darn easy to use, and its clean and quick. And at a rough guess, I reckon that is what really attracts users to it.
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
Edited by danm, 22 December 2011 - 04:51 AM.