Hi Greg,
My purpose was to strip away that layer and just show that there is not
a need, from the desires I have seen on this list so far, for a pure
JavaScript implementation. Not that it can't be done or that people will
fight you on it if you really want to put in that level of effort. I
only wanted to demonstrate that the results can also be acquired through
JSON which is so native to JavaScript and then we JavaScript developers
can do what we do best: focus on the front-end presentation of the UI
and the rendering of the material. Why tackle more of the stack than is
necessary? If you can stand on the shoulders of 20 years of development
effort that's gone into Sword (and I don't know how much, but plenty
that's gone into JSword) to build your utility, why wouldn't you? That's
what Xiphos, BibleTime, BPBible, BibleCS, xulsword, PocketSword, Bishop,
AndBible, the web study tool, numerous helper scripts written in Perl
and Python, Bible Desktop, Eloquent/MacSword, and still yet others have
all opted for. All of them, and more, rely on only two implementations
of the Sword engine because the shared effort provides these people the
ability to value-add, rather than toil away fixing all the bugs and
reverse engineering the file structure.
I don't want to be offensiv, just want to share my efforts. I really
would prefer a way not to write everything from scratch and you're
right, there are limitations in a pure JS implementation. That's the
reason why I observe several other ideas like the nodejs things. On the
other side I'm still excited what is possible in pure client-side JS.
One of the main reasons, why I've started swordjs was FirefoxOS. They
don't allow native plugins. The sword project is a very great and I
respect all the efforts that went into this library. Someone in this
list suggested to make phonegap plugins and I think that is a very good
idea, because you can use the native lib offline and have a JS-frontend
on the other side. But I don't have an android/iOS device and so my
motivation isn't that high to start this, although it would be a great
project.
BibleZ HD (a webOS app) has a native plugin and it was great to rely on
such a good library like libsword. From today's perspective using the
native lib directly or through bindings/plugins would be the best way.
As I've said, FxOS was one of the main reason. Because I use it as my
second phone, I want to have offline access a bible, so there is a big
personal motivation, too ;) Cause I like to develop things in
Javascript, swordjs is a good thing (for me) to see, what you can do in
pure clinet-side Javascript.
Blessings,
Stephan
PS: BTW, if you're looking for a good cross-platform app framework, take
a look at enyojs.com ;)
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