25 replies to this topic

[Josh Bond]

I obviously like e-Sword, or I wouldn't run this website. Of the free Bible software programs, it's what I use most frequently. Some of these features are commonly found in other free bible software. I would love to see them in e-Sword.

Some may argue these are merely "nice to have". But many of these features are very much substantive, because without them, certain works cannot be converted into e-Sword format or if they can be converted, the usability and functionality is reduced.

So my list so far is:

1) Support a linking system. Why?

a. So one dictionary entry can link to other dictionary entry (to see the definition of an abbreviation used in the dictionary, for example).

b. So that a commentary can link to a specific portion of a topic file. Currently, we're forced to incorrectly use dictionaries for this functionality, when a linking system would make this so much easier.

c. A linking system could correctly capture footnotes in Bibles, commentaries, and elsewhere, instead of what content makers have resorted to.

d. Resources that are converted to e-Sword from other software formats lose this functionality (and the data behind this functionality).

2) Render graphics. Why?

a. Content makers conceive increasingly "rigged" ways of trying to incorporate graphics, like hard-coding a link to a local file. This often results in graphics that frustrate the reader because they work on some PC's but not others, depending on the setup, permissions, Administrator rights, etc.

b. Displaying a real, in-line graphic is so much better than an ugly, local file link (that won't work on some configurations).

c. Resources that are converted to e-Sword from other software formats lose this functionality (and the data behind this functionality). "See below for a diagram of... [missing data]." That's not a good end user experience. And neither is giving the end user broken content.

d. Switching to the Graphics Viewer isn't a very good long term solution. Stop reading here, switch to the graphics viewer, find the right image, are you looking at the right image, are you sure, ok continue reading? I know it wasn't originally designed that way. That's evident from the .map and .mapx filenames. The original intent was likely to just display maps. But I respectfully submit that the need for graphics have outgrown the Graphics (Map) Viewer.

3) Support Greek (and probably Hebrew) characters in the dictionary index. Why?

a. Lexicons like Liddell and Scott's will not display properly because, as best I can tell, e-Sword does not support such characters in the dictionary index. The characters display properly elsewhere, but not in the index.

b. Text in a commentary or Bible would then be keyed to the entry in the dictionary without strong's.

4) Treat Topics like Books, because that's what most are today. 6, 8, 10 years ago, this may not have been true. It is today.

a. Have a window pane (rather than a pull down menu) showing all the topics in the Book (see attachment below).

b. Make the pane re-sizable.

c. Sort the topics according to the database, not alphabetically, to avoid awkward and time consuming display order formatting. It's why a database exists to begin with, to store content and data about how to display the content. Why resort to "rigging" the sort order of content display with 0's, spaces, and other characters given precedence in an alphabetical sort?

d. Allow for topics and subtopics (a hiearchy) because much of the information needs to be displayed in this fashion.

e. Backward compatibility could easily be achieved with the way topics are currently rendered.

5) Add a window pane to Commentary text (similar to #4 above) showing which verses of the commentary have comments (see attachment below).

a. But, e-Sword has the blue (i) feature already showing you, once you're on a verse, if a commentary has a comment for the verse.

i) Yes, but with the suggested feature, you could see AHEAD what verses have comments. I've had people insist that the MacLaren commentary is missing information. It's not. It just looks like more information in other formats because you can see which verses have comments.

ii) This is very helpful for smaller commentaries when people want to "see what the commentary has to say".

b. People have incorrectly made harmonies because of the lack of this commentary feature (inability to see ahead what verses the commentary has comments on).

c. The window pane would have re-sizable and entries selectable. If you want to skip to another comment elsewhere in the commentary, you can simply by clicking the entry.

6) Display Bible, Commentary, and Dictionary tabs in "proper" alphabetical order along rows.

a. Currently, when more than one row of tabs exist, the sort order starts on the bottom row in alphabetical order, working its way to the top row.

b. It should be opposite because our brains want to read top to bottom, left to right, A-Z (not top to bottom Z-A). This is probably the most finicky of suggestions, I'll admit that. But I'd love to see it because this has to confuse new users. It confuses me.

That's my thoughts. I welcome yours. Realistically, what would you like to see in e-Sword?

Attached Files

•  topics.png   18.48K   32 downloads
•  commentary.png   8.73K   34 downloads

[dyan]

I agree wholeheartedly with all that you have said, and would like to add a few more things.

1) Global search across commentaries, dictionaries, notes, and topic file.

2) The ability to search Greek or Hebrew words

If all these changes were implemented this would take e-Sword to the next level.

Besides, these, a few more cosmetic changes would improve the overall user experience.

1) A single menu button (with a slide down menu) on the icon toolbar, getting ride of the menu bar altogether.

2) The ability to toggle the title bar of each pane (once a user is familiar with e-sword, he would not require a title bar, telling him which pane is the commentaries, dictionaries, etc)

3) The ability to color tabs according to resource type

4) A single row Tab bar, with a slider button at the end, which slides out to show all tabs, and which can be set open or closed position.

[Justin]

Study notes should be able to span multiple verses and should generally be more like commentaries.

3rd party plugins! With support for those, we would add many if not all of these features ourselves.

[Live4Jesus]

4) Treat Topics like Books, because that's what most are today. 6 years ago, this may not have been true. It is today.

5) Add a window pane to Commentary text (similar to #4 above) showing which verses of the commentary have comments (see attachment below).

*Falls on knees* ... *Raises hands to heavens* ....*offends conservative Baptists with a charismatic display*

Please, OH PLEASE, I pray for these features!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jonathon]

1) Support a linking system.

Issue # 1: RTF Support;
Issue # 2: Users can, and do change file names;

The simple solution to the first issue is to get rid of RTF as the presentation markup language, replacing it with HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0.
(From my POV, there are a number of other reasons to replace RTF with HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0)

The downside of this solution, is that it will cause yet another break in e-Sword resources.

2) Render graphics.

Whilst RTF can contain graphics, they are extremely large.

My guess is that it is a matter of configuring the presentation engine in e-Sword to recognize, and differentiate the different types of binary blobs that are included in the RTF content.

The virtue of SQLite, is that it doesn't care what the content of the field is. What I have not looked at, is whether or not a field can contain both text content, and binary blobs. If it can, then the presentation markup engine used by e-Sword should be able to differentiate between the various types of binary blobs, and display/play them accordingly. Otherwise, you are looking at a function that can only be available with official resources.

Content makers conceive increasingly "rigged" ways of trying to incorporate graphics, like hard-coding a link to a local file.

The issues Bible Software developers were looking at a decade ago, are very different from the issues they are looking at today. On the flip side, content creators are trying to do things that were never conceived of, by software developers.

One solution has been to throw everything related to graphics into the cloud. Google Maps being the most popular. I don't like that solution, because the cloud is not always available.

Switching to the Graphics Viewer isn't a very good long term solution. ... The original intent was likely to just display maps. But I respectfully submit that the need for graphics have outgrown the Graphics (Map) Viewer.

For some things, the Graphics Viewer is the most useful way to present images. For others things, images within the resource are more useful. I'd recommend keeping the graphic viewer, and adding the ability to include images, audio, and video to the resource.

3) Support Greek (and probably Hebrew) characters in the dictionary index.

This is a subset of the issue that e-Sword has with all Biblical Languages. My impression is that Rick is trying different solutions.

From my POV, the two things that need to be done to fix the Biblical Language Support issue are:

• Reject all content that does not utilize UTF-8;
• Replace RTF with HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0;

b. Text in a commentary or Bible would then be keyed to the entry in the dictionary without Strong's.

+1

The issue here is that e-Sword is still targeted for new Christians. People that don't know Greek, etc, and may not grok why learning the Greek is a better idea than buying the latest translation into English.


FWIW, the text can be keyed to dictionary entries, but doing so requires constructing resources with a degree of care, and attention to detail that is usually lacking. (I don't blame resource creators for not doing it.

###

Response broken into three posts.

jonathon

[jonathon]

4) Treat Topics like Books, because that's what most are today.

I'm aware of two accounts of how topical files came to be.

The story I give the most credence to is:

A user requested a notes component.  The idea was that short notes about a specific subject would be written. 

When implemented, nobody expected that Topical Files would ever run into the 500 MB size, and contain thousands of pages.

Sort the topics according to the database, not alphabetically,

The RFE I submitted, was for a format that essentially duplicates that used by Bibles, but without the Book, Chapter, Verse limitations. Granted, I was looking at it in terms of reproducing The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Secret Gospel of Judas of Keiroth, etc, so that each "page" in e-Sword would reflect each page in the original codex.

5) Add a window pane to Commentary text (similar to #4 above) showing which verses of the commentary have comments

Resubmit that as an RFE to Rick. The RFE proposal should make it very clear what is being requested, and how it differs from the existing setup.

e-Sword has the blue (i) feature already showing you, once you're on a verse, if a commentary has a comment for the verse.

Note to self: Debug tool that removes junk data in e-Sword resources.

From my POV, the biggest problem with the blue (i), and one that I suspect will affect your proposal, are the number of resources, and resource creators that put "junk content" in the resource records and fields.

Display Bible, Commentary, and Dictionary tabs in "proper" alphabetical order along rows.

Ideally, this would be user selectable, the default being Top to Bottom, Left to Right, with other arrangements also available.

jonathon

[jonathon]

Realistically, what would you like to see in e-Sword?

I'm simply listing these for general discussion, here.

Morphology:

• Sentence Diagramming;
• Word Clouds;
• Lemmatization;
• Parsing;
• Morphological analysis;

Search:

• Extended Skip Length Search;
• Proximity search that crosses chapter and verse boundaries;
• Boolean Search: "OR";
• Boolean Search: Parenthesis deliminators;
• Gematria Value;

Other Stuff:

• Parshiyot / Lectionary support;
• On the fly Interlinear Bible construction;
• On the fly Reverse Interlinear Bible construction;

jonathon

[TC Exagorazo]

Can you guys speak in a language that is understandable to us common everyday computer users who are not technicians?? Most of what you are saying is going right over my head. In order for this site to be "user friendly" it needs to be "user understandable"

TC

[Josh Bond]

[/b]Issue # 1: RTF Support;
Issue # 2: Users can, and do change file names;

The simple solution to the first issue is to get rid of RTF as the presentation markup language, replacing it with HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0.
(From my POV, there are a number of other reasons to replace RTF with HTML 5.0 and CSS 3.0)

The downside of this solution, is that it will cause yet another break in e-Sword resources.

Not really, just use RTF's internal ({field) hyperlink linking system. Simple enough, no break in resources created, continue to recognize tooltipped verses as well. A current, popular free bible software does this already. I wouldn't recommend abandoning RTF, it's not practical. This is easily remedied using built-in RTF hyperlinks.

Whilst RTF can contain graphics, they are extremely large.

My guess is that it is a matter of configuring the presentation engine in e-Sword to recognize, and differentiate the different types of binary blobs that are included in the RTF content.

The virtue of SQLite, is that it doesn't care what the content of the field is. What I have not looked at, is whether or not a field can contain both text content, and binary blobs. If it can, then the presentation markup engine used by e-Sword should be able to differentiate between the various types of binary blobs, and display/play them accordingly. Otherwise, you are looking at a function that can only be available with official resources.

Multiple free Bible software already support embedding graphics. Seems to work fine. Does make some files large. Worst case, create an e-sword graphics folder and let the content creator embed the images with a local rtf path to the image.

The issue here is that e-Sword is still targeted for new Christians. People that don't know Greek, etc, and may not grok why learning the Greek is a better idea than buying the latest translation into English.

I want e-Sword to remain competitive with features commonly found in other free Bible software, but yes, without losing its appeal to new Christians.

From my POV, the biggest problem with the blue (i), and one that I suspect will affect your proposal, are the number of resources, and resource creators that put "junk content" in the resource records and fields.

The screenshot I provided is from a free Bible software. It just shows you what you would see from a database view, a navigable window pane with Books/Scriptures and if you see a reference, you know there's a comment. If there's "false" readings because someone inserted a "This verse has no commentary", then I would suggest bad content creation shouldn't hinder good development.

When implemented, nobody expected that Topical Files would ever run into the 500 MB size, and contain thousands of pages.

Of course not, no one could foresee this. That's why it's time to overhaul Topics according to how they're used today and in a way that favors user-friendly usage. None of this is intended as criticism, just a friendly suggestion of things I'd like to see and things others have brought to my attention repeatedly (but then again, I don't have to spend hours coding it, and asking is easier than coding).

1) Global search across commentaries, dictionaries, notes, and topic file.

Definitely!

[Josh Bond]

I'm simply listing these for general discussion, here.

• Word Clouds;
• Lemmatization;
• Parsing;
• Morphological analysis;
• Extended Skip Length Search;
• Proximity search that crosses chapter and verse boundaries;
• Boolean Search: "OR";
• Boolean Search: Parenthesis deliminators;
• Gematria Value;
• Parshiyot / Lectionary support;
• On the fly Interlinear Bible construction;On the fly Reverse Interlinear Bible construction;

jonathon

I hear you but most people on this forum wouldn't understand what any of this means, and arguably the people on this forum have a much higher than average interest in e-Sword. So your casual users would have be even less likely to understand it, because as you said, e-Sword attracts new Christians. A volunteer coder can't spend his time coding for 1% of the userbase. Those would be nice to have, but the effort required versus the reward received as a percentage of the userbase would likely be very small.

That's why I suggest making the existing interface, functions, and features easier to use with the direction e-Sword has taken..