Another active project based on a different fork of JSword is STEP Bible.
https://stepbible.org/
I’m not directly involved in it, but I thought this to be significant enough to
draw to your attention.
Best regards,
David
On Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 17:56, Arnaud Vié <[unas.zole+a...@gmail.com](mailto:On
Sun, Feb 18, 2024 at 17:56, Arnaud Vié <<a href=)> wrote:
> Hi Peter and Troy, and thanks for the welcome !
>
> Thanks Peter for the historical context, it does explain where things come
> from.
> I do have a lot of things to answer though :-)
>
>> The SVN site for libsword is the current, not old. It is just that very
>> little changes over long stretches.
>
> Indeed, I understand that the libsword SVN is still actively used for
> development. That's why I mentioned it as the least "urgent" thing to change
> in my opinion - as long as it works like this for its main contributors.
> I do think a move to git(hub or lab) would be beneficial for the long term
> though - for the usual technical reasons, but also more importantly for the
> visibility of the project and its ability to attract younger contributors for
> long term maintenance, which is always a challenge for open source projects.
>
>> Jsword is similarly old, largely feature complete and little changes Two big
>> projects use it and contribute back to it.
>
> That's where I'll respectfully disagree.
>
> First, "feature complete" is never completely true for an open source project
> : there is always room for improvement and evolution driven by the community.
> For example, I recently contributed to the andbible Jsword fork to properly
> support versification mappings for deuterocanonical texts, and I aim in the
> future to provide some support for other kinds of parallels (in particular
> eusebian parallels which is currently absent as far as I know).
> Similarly, once I formalise the OSIS evolution I want to propose for modular
> versifications, and if it gets approved, it will need to be implemented in
> both libsword and jsword.
> So there is in fact a lot of future potential activity to be done on jsword -
> as in pretty much all open source projects. It's just a matter of giving a
> visible and lively place for the community to propose ideas and
> implementations.
>
> Second, I'll argue that you believe it's "feature complete" only because the
> main repo is inactive and unmaintained, thus you've actually lost all
> visibility of how the project is actually used.
> Consider that AndBible, probably the most widely used application based on
> jsword, had to build its own fork to be able to integrate bugfixes (see [all
> the bugfix PRs Tuomas tried to open on the main repo since
> 2019](https://github.com/crosswire/jsword/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr) before
> resigning himself to build his own fork), and they're they only ones
> publishing a jsword maven artifact.
> Because the andbible fork is the only one alive and readily usable, it's also
> the one that people actually use for other independant projects (as do I in a
> small project I haven't shared publicly yet, in fact).
>
> But Tuomas, while being a great and proactive android dev, is not a java
> "backend" expert, and not an OSIS/Sword expert. I'm pretty sure he would be
> glad if CrossWire gathered a renewed community around the project to take
> back ownership. Which is what I'm volunteering to help with.
>
> Again, I really mean no offense to anyone with this - in particular to the
> original jsword developer, dmsmith, that did a great work with it until 2019.
> I'm worried so much about the status of jsword precisely because I think it's
> a great library, with lots of well designed components, which needs just a
> small refresh to be more easily maintaineable and accessible in the modern
> world.
>
>> OSIS - crosswire is the principal user, but as it stands it is an
>> international standard, and not under our control.
>
> That's a good point, but is anyone actually still in control ? From what I
> understand, the organisation "bibletechnologies.net" that originally defined
> it has disappeared, and from what I've seen, the only people keeping some
> public knowledge of OSIS are crosswire, and the only projects actively using
> OSIS are crosswire projects (the sword ecosystem).
> When CrossWire created an osis-core mailing list and started maintaining
> amended versions, I think it implicitly recognised that it had become the
> lead authority on the topic. :-)
>
>> Yes, last year we had a discussion on the CrossWire and git topic and you
>> can see the discussion in the mail archives here.
>
> Thanks Troy for the link, very interesting !
> I see mostly discussion on the merits of GitHub vs. GitLab. I have no
> definitive opinion between the two : philosophically I'm more inclined to use
> the open source software (so GitLab is good), but in practice my main worry
> in this thread is to improve visibility and attractiveness for contributors
> (on that part, GitHub has the advantage).
> My point is, even if in the end we use GitLab, we should at least update the
> GitHub project to be clean and contain links to the relevant GitLab projects,
> to make it a proper entrypoint.
>
>> Regarding OSIS, can you post here what proposal you would like to make? I am
>> sure many people here will have comments on your idea.
>
> Thanks for your interest !
> I'm still formalising the proposal (writing an accurate description of all
> the principles and objectives behind it), but I'll open a dedicated thread in
> this mailing list very soon.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Arnaud
>
> Le dim. 18 févr. 2024 à 12:35, Troy A. Griffitts <scr...@crosswire.org> a
> écrit :
>
>> Dear Arnaud and others,
>>
>> Peter has done a good job summarizing.
>>
>> Yes, last year we had a discussion on the CrossWire and git topic and you
>> can see the discussion in the mail archives here.
>>
>> [https://crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2023-March/subject.hYes, last
>> year we had a discussion on the CrossWire and git topic and you can see the
>> discussion in the mail archives
>> here.tml](https://crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2023-March/subject.html)
>>
>> Some progress has been made.
>>
>> Regarding OSIS, can you post here what proposal you would like to make? I am
>> sure many people here will have comments on your idea.
>>
>> I am happy for your interest to get involved and for your zeal to see things
>> more visible and active.
>>
>> Welcome,
>>
>> Troy
>>
>> On February 18, 2024 00:57:34 MST, Peter von Kaehne <ref...@gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Arnaud,
>>>
>>> It makes sense to understand some things better when seen in history:
>>>
>>> There are three core projects to CrossWire - libsword, jsword and the text
>>> modules - all others are independent but related users.
>>>
>>> The SVN site for libsword is the current, not old. It is just that very
>>> little changes over long stretches. Libsword is 30 + year old and does its
>>> job. Errors and bugs get corrected , big proposals happen once in a long
>>> while and then come into the code. Development happens in spurts, once
>>> every few years currently - but as users (other projects) are on disparate
>>> platforms consensus is needed.
>>>
>>> Jsword is similarly old, largely feature complete and little changes Two
>>> big projects use it and contribute back to it.
>>>
>>> Substantial internal changes would require consensus across these projects
>>> at the very least.
>>>
>>> Most current development happens in programmes using it and in module
>>> development.
>>>
>>> The GitLab site was created by some of us who create modules for texts
>>> which are in the public domain but have little other exposure
>>>
>>> OSIS - crosswire is the principal user, but as it stands it is an
>>> international standard, and not under our control. We do maintain some
>>> internal amendments as the standard has not been updated otherwise since
>>> creation.
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>> Sent from [Outlook for iOS](https://aka.ms/o0ukef)
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> From: sword-devel <sword-devel-boun...@crosswire.org> on behalf of Arnaud
>>> Vié <[unas.zole+a...@gmail.com](mailto:unas.zole%2ba...@gmail.com)>
>>> Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2024 11:02 pm
>>> To: SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [sword-devel] Making better use of the CrossWire GitHub
>>> project ?
>>>
>>> Thanks Matej for all the information !
>>> (and your git mirrror, that will be quite helpful :-) )
>>>
>>> Is the gitlab project referenced anywhere on the crosswire website ?
>>> Because I've been looking all over and only found the svn link ^^'
>>> That's exactly the kind of problems I'm talking about when I say the
>>> project's visibility could be improved, to make it more possible for new
>>> people to get interested and join !
>>> I don't have anything against GitLab, but GitHub is by far more popular.
>>> People can randomly search for projects on GitHub - but virtually no one
>>> searches for projects on GitLab if they don't already know that the project
>>> is hosted there. So if we use GitLab for all development, we should at
>>> least put some links in the GitHub project description and on the crosswire
>>> website to tell people where to go.
>>>
>>> Regarding the GitLab project, just like pinoaffe I can't see any repository
>>> related to the OSIS specification, only bible modules and a "script" repo.
>>>
>>> And by the way, given the number of module (ie "data") repositories
>>> present, another suggestion I can make is to keep the repositories related
>>> to core functionality (spec, librairies, etc.) in a separate project, as
>>> their contributors will likely be very different. As a developer, finding a
>>> code repository in the middle of 6 pages of data repos is not very
>>> convenient.
>>> In that regards, it could even make sense to keep gitlab for data, and use
>>> github for code - or just create a separate gitlab project for code
>>> repositories, whatever people prefer.
>>>
>>> Finally, for jsword, to be honest I'm not really worried about its
>>> "organizational" status : after 5 years without breathing it's
>>> unambiguously dead.
>>> My request is to mostly to try to reach whoever has admin rights on the
>>> "crosswire" GitHub project, and see if they would be willing to let me take
>>> over jsword to refresh it :-)
>>>
>>> Le sam. 17 févr 2024 à 21:12, Matěj Cepl <mc...@cepl.eu> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> On Sat Feb 17, 2024 at 4:46 PM CET, Arnaud Vié wrote:
>>>>> I think a lot of that could be improved by making better use of the
>>>>> crosswire github project <https://github.com/crosswire>, which is nowadays
>>>>> the first contact most young developers will have with these crosswire
>>>>> projects.
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/crosswire is mostly dead. There
>>>> is more life (especially for modules) at
>>>> https://gitlab.com/crosswire-bible-society and then there is
>>>> another GitLab at https://git.crosswire.org/ (for contributors
>>>> only).
>>>>
>>>>> - *Revive the jsword github repository*.
>>>>
>>>> jsword is organizationally in many aspects a separate project from libsword
>>>>
>>>>> - *Create a new Git repository for the OSIS specification*.
>>>>
>>>> See on gitlab.
>>>>
>>>>> - Ideally, I'd also suggest *moving the C++ sword code to github*.
>>>>> Having it only on an old SVN repo
>>>>> <https://crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk/>, not browsable or searchable
>>>>> online, really harms its visibility. I used a little bit of SVN while in
>>>>> engineering school 12 years ago, but I doubt that most young devs nowadays
>>>>> even know about it.
>>>>
>>>> I don’t even comment on this one any more (just mirror it to
>>>> https://git.cepl.eu/cgit/sword/), because where there is no
>>>> advice, there is no help.
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>>
>>>> Matěj
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> http://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/, @mcepl@floss.social
>>>> GPG Finger: 3C76 A027 CA45 AD70 98B5 BC1D 7920 5802 880B C9D8
>>>>
>>>> Why should I travel, when I’m already there?
>>>> -- Bostonian lady, when being asked why she never visited
>>>> other places than Boston
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> --
>> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>> _______________________________________________
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