[bt-devel] KDE4, Qt4, and Windows porting... plus DCOP

[Mathias Bavay]

On Saturday 06 August 2005 12:09, Gabriel M. Beddingfield wrote:
> How does a Windows port better serve the Church?

I'm currently trying to build a CD containing Bibles in various languages 
(English, French, Arabic at least). In order to do so, I looked at which 
WINDOWS sword front end could be used... And only Biblestudy (partially) 
fulfills my needs (modern GUI, easy enough, ... but still a lot to do before 
that software to become a real, nice Bible study tool). This is why BibleTime 
would be amazingly great. BibleTime being light years ahead of any Sword 
front end for Windows, a port would be wonderfull and perfectly needed.

> There are currently 3+ Sword-based Windows projects (one or two claiming to
> be "cross-platform"), in addition there are many commercial products that
> are reasonably priced.  (E.g. the free NASB QuickBible.)  While BibleTime
> is an excellent app, if the idea is to create a top-notch cross-platform
> app -- it might be better to unite with a project that's closer to
> realizing this goal than create a port to compete with them. 

There is no way to re-use BibleTime's code into a MFC, WxWidgets, ... app. QT 
is QT, MFC is MFC, ... and the only part that is common to all these projects 
is.... the Sword engine (that is already shared).

> Porting 
> BibleTime to Windows would be like doing *yet another* English translation
> of the Bible.

One of the great strength of BibleTime is its management of non-English 
languages and specially other alphabets. Currently with Biblestudy, there is 
the problem that this is based on WxWidgets that does NOT support RtoL 
texts... so this is a big problem for Arabic, ... And since the Word of God 
has to be proclaimed to ALL nations, that includes non-English speaking 
nations ;-)) Another issue is also the Open Source vs proprietary software: I 
can distribute CD's containing Sword front ends in the streets (for 
evangelization), I can definitely not do it with a commercial/proprietary 
software (except if you want people you evangelize to pay for their 
evangelization !)

The only serious issue I see with a QT4/Windows port is the manpower... And 
this is a serious issue. I would really love to start helping, but I'm still 
working on several projects (like that CD for evangelization) and I need to 
finish them before starting something else.

Mathias
-- 
Mathias Bavay
Ivanhoe Technologies Inc.
505-332-2169