I'd love to get input on what features you like/use from other sites,
and what you would like a web interface to a Bible study tool to look like.
Please consider GenBook support, as well. What would a general book
reader look like for the web?
I'd love any time you have to help design and implement this.
I have a lot of suggestion. Most of them are based on what I did in http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE and the recent work I help to tjm on the http://bible.fhl.net
Below are some raw writing I copy and paste from an early mail I send to someone I definitely should rewrite it to a paper with screen shot to let other people to understand it
Is that true there are a Bible technology conference every year? Could someone tell me when is this year and is there a call for paper ? I would like to propose some talks there.
[btw, I won't repeat the information about how to present interlinear text or sn number on HTML here. I already forward the information about how tjm's bible.fhl.net site use w3c.org xhtml <ruby> recommendation and how his Bible site got listed on the w3c site as demo case. ....]
tjm's site also have some feature that I don't use. Those featurs require user to got an user id and password to log in. Then the site will remember some history and preference for the user. tjm- could you summarized it? If you are not confident about your English. You can send me in Chinese and I can translate it into English for you.
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Dear John:
Putting your Bible translation on the internet and make a web base localized Bible tool are totally two different thing. I am suggesting the later one and you tell me you have plan for the first one.
While PDF is a very good format to preserve the same looking in any environment, it is not a good way to create interactative application
What is the difference between making the Bible accessiable online (as pdf) and making a web base Bible tool? Let me give you several example what I did for the Chinese Bible and some other Chinese Bible project
First, look at http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE
This is the Chinese Bible site I made in early 1996. I improve it over time
What it offer including some basic and some advance features
Basic feature
1. Look at the left pane- that is the "reading pane" and the right pane is the "searching pane"
on the left hand side, on the top there are two menu and one button
The first menu allow user to select a "book" from the 66 book, and the 2nd menu allow user to select a chapter. The number of the chapter menu will adjust depend on which book the user select. For example, if you select the 7 books from the top- which is Ruth, the you will have 4 chapter, if you select Gensis- the first one, you will have 50 chapter.
and if you click the botton [Read]. The left pane will load the chapter in
Notice, every single verse have a link and it allow other people to link against a particular Book/Chapter/Verse
for example, our church link against a different Chinese bible web site to promot daily bible reading. Take a look at http://hoc5.org/bible_study/diary.asp the calendar there link against another Chinese bible site's particular book and chapter. They offer similar functionality as my site do. The point is, this allow the 3rd party to link against a particular book/chapter or even book/chapter/verse
now let me show you some more advance work.
In each reading page (chapter), you will see on the top there are 4 links
< > [music note] [Alpha in Greek or Alef Hebrew]
The < and > link move to the previous or next chapter
If you click the [music note], it will play the mp3 recording of Chinese Bible. The recording is served from FamilyRadio. I simply link to them. It will read that particlar chapter to the user.
If you click the [Alpha in Greek or Alef Hebrew], it will load the same chapter from a more advance site (bible.fhl.net) in the right pane. That site offer Greek/Hebrew parallel with Chinese, so it is for the purpose of advance study. Their project is not completed yet. So some of the chapter won't show you Greek/Hebrew yet.
ok, let's look at the right hand side, on the top, there are a text field and two menu and one botton
The text field is to input search text
the first menu decide the "strategy" of the scope
three selection [Book Set][Withing One book][Within one chapter of a book]
The default is [Book set], in that case, the 2nd menu show the following selection
All Bible
OT
NT
First 5 books
History
....
Paul's letter
Other Letter
If you change the first menu to the 2nd option, the 2nd menu become the book selection (from the 66 books)
if you change the first menu to the 3rd option, the 2nd menu become the book selection (from the 66 books) and also a 3rd menu show up to let user select the chapter.
The default text in the text field is "Jesus", you can copy some other from the left hand side reading pane to it and search
There are a unname checkbox there, by default the check box is on, which mean all the verse will listed with verse id and the verse text. if the checkbox is off, we will only show you the verse id
once you hit the [Search] button on the right upper side, the right pane will load the search result.
A link of the result verse id will be show with the verse itself. If you click on the verse id, the context (chapter) of that verse will be load into the left hand side, this will help user to do bible study and look at the context of the search result.
The text come with Traditioanl Chinese (used by Taiwan and HongKong) and Simplified Chinese (used in China and Singaport)
Traditional chinese is on
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE/v2frame.html
The simplified chines site is on
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE/v2framegb.html
same functinality but different face style
Also, we have a paralle version reading with English Bible on
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE/v2xref.html
There are two pane on the botton and 4 menu on the top
The first menu let user select Book. The 2nd menu let user select chapter (simliar to the reading one)
The 3rd and 4th menu let user select which version they want to read (TradChinese, SimpChinese, KJV, NIV, NASB, set)
you can change the first and 2nd menu to different selection and see the bottom two pane load with different chapter
The chinese bible is served from my site and also bible.fhl.net. The English one is served from biblegateway
This will let people easily compare with different version for Bible study
Also, recently, our church purchase two nice AV projector for the service. So I also create a special version for projector at
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/BIBLE/projection.html
After you load the page with this url, hit F11 key
and it will let the IE take over the full screen (hit F11 again to bring back)
The UI is simplier because it only let the control room people to jump to different book/chapter/verse when the pastor give a verse in the service
The only different between this version and the normal reading is some addition style information in the front to tell it to display with dark backround light color text and large size text (for projection purpose, remember :) )
My church (http://hoc5.org Home Of Christ in Cupertino Area) use that projection version during our Sunday Service
As I memtioned, there are some other site do more advance Bible tool
http://bible.fhl.net/new offer many different tools
for example, if you load
http://bible.fhl.net/new/read.php?VERSION1=unv&VERSION4=bhs&strongflag=1&TABFLAG=1&chineses=%AB%A2&chap=1&submit1=%BE%5C%C5%AA
it will sho you Chinese bible with Strong number, Hebrew in gif. Also all the strong number you can click, and it will show you the dictionary entry which translated (some of them are finished, some of them are not done yet) into Chinese
If you click the ”tc?link in the end of each verse, it wil show you the translated ”topic commentary?(?) . If you click on the ”tsk?it will also show you some info. You can also click the ”parsing?to see the parsing of the Hebrew which translated into Chinese
you can also see another example of linking into the Bible from
http://bible.fhl.net/new/sy.php
In that page, it list another calendar to give some order of bible reading.
as you can see, the Internet is not just HTTP. it also include URL, HTML, CSS, _javascript_, These technology allow us to INTERGATE information from different sources easily.
Putting PDF on the internet will let people who have difficulty to buy the printed Bible a chance to print it out and read it as what the printed Bible. The Internet Web Bible tool will let user study the bible very differently. In the future, we may create Internet Bible Map to show the location of Bible city from photographic taken from Space Shuttle or Seattlite
(see the raw material on
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/bibleimages/jordanriver.html
http://people.netscape.com/ftang/bibleimages/greece.html
The image is directly served from NASA, this is raw image, my idea is to put floating text on top of it to indicate the city location)
