[bt-devel] BibleTime Mobile

[Gary Holmlund]

Greg,

See comments below.

On 05/27/2014 11:15 AM, Greg Hellings wrote:
> Gary,
>
> So far things are off to a good start. A few bugs I've noticed so far:
>
> 1) After the initial load of the app I open one bible (ESV) and then 
> one commentary (MHC). I then switch the layout to Tabbed. When I do 
> this, the UI lists the two tabs [ESV, MHC] with ESV selected although 
> MHC is actually displayed. This only seems to happen the first time I 
> make this selection after the app is opened.
I have not been able to duplicate this.

> 2) When I have two open tabs, [ESV, MHC], and the second one (MHC) is 
> active and I then close that tab, the content of the first tab will be 
> displayed but the background of the tab bar button will indicate that 
> the one remaining tab is not active. When the first tab (ESV) is 
> active and I close it, the widget properly auto-selects the second tab 
> after switching it to the only tab.
Yes, I duplicated that. I will look into it.

> 3) If I force the program to exit by bringing up the open applications 
> list on the home screen and swipe away the program, it did not save 
> and restore the state of my open windows.
Yes, I see that also.

> 4) When I first open a Lexicon/Dictionary, and before I scroll the 
> window, the selection box is blank instead of indicating the first 
> entry in the application
Yes, I see that.

> 5) When only one work is open, and I select the Search option, I am 
> offered two identical entries in which works to select combo box. It 
> seems to be that the first is the list of all open works, and the 
> second is the individual work itself. When there's only one work open 
> it looks strange to have two entries for it. Also, when no works are 
> open, but one of them used to be, I will still be prompted to search 
> in that most recently open work, although when I open that combo box 
> to select a different work, there are 0 entries in it.
Yes, this need more work.

> 6) I've occasionally had times when the app exited/crashed while 
> opening a work. It's always been times when I've opened a new window 
> with the same work as a recently closed window, but I have not been 
> able to nail down the exact circumstances. Sorry for the lack of 
> detail, and I'll keep trying to peg the exact crash circumstances if I 
> can.
I have not seen this.

>
> A few improvements to recommend:
>
> 1) The performance of the install manager feels a little sluggish 
> while switching the language or module type selection. This is what I 
> mentioned in IRC. It's not unusable, it's just a little noticeable.
Agreed. It is on my TODO list

> 2) When selecting a work for a new window, especially if the work is 
> going to render quite a bit of context (such as MHC), the UI will seem 
> to pause before the new window is drawn with content. Once it caused 
> the system to claim the app had stopped responding, but the 
> responsiveness came back within one second. Perhaps the new window 
> could be created and drawn, and then a little loading/progress bar or 
> spinner could be displayed while text is rendered?
I am not seeing any slowdown when opening MHC or changing a reference in 
MHC. I am not sure what to do about this.

> 3) During initial program load, a little bit of progress or spinner 
> similar to the desktop splash screen so I know that the black window 
> is not the final form? If I wasn't aware of the text reading and 
> caching that Sword does when an SWMgr is created, I would be surprised 
> by this delay.
Good suggestion.

> 4) The ability to link scrolling of one work to another - probably 
> only useful for Bible/Commentary modules so that I can have open two 
> works and they function similarly to parallel Bibles or a study Bible. 
> This needn't be an automatic process - it could be a selection to say 
> which two or more works the user wants linked together.
This is already on my TODO list.

> 5) The first time a lexicon is opened, BibleTime's backend code will 
> read and cache all the keys in it in a file and will only revisit that 
> list and regenerate it when the module version # is updated. For most 
> lexica (Strong's Greek, Strong's Hebrew, etc) this is perfectly 
> reasonable. However, for larger works (WebstersDict) this resulted in 
> a delay long enough that I thought the application had crashed. 
> Perhaps this generation could be pushed off into a non-UI thread such 
> as during the installation/update phase?
Noted. I will have to think about this some. Perhaps during install is 
reasonable.

> 6) I'd like to be able to add a custom document repository - perhaps I 
> missed how to do that? But I'd like to be able to point the 
> application to my private repository at home and install from there. 
> This is doubly enticing now that the engine has support for SFTP 
> installation sources.
Yes, this also comes up from the IRC discussion about sharing documents 
with AndBible, etc.

>
> While my phone is pretty powerful, on older hardware creation of the 
> CLucene index can be slow. I believe Nic Carter (Pocket Sword over on 
> iOS) has implemented a repository where users can download a CLucene 
> index for an installed work from our main repositories. While this is 
> going to be the standard Sword-created CLucene and not the BibleTime 
> specific index, it might be nice to look at offering a similar 
> feature. Obviously it wouldn't replace the creation of local indexes 
> for private modules, but it might be a nice feature to offer the user 
> the choice of downloading a pre-made index vs creating their own locally.
I think that will be far down the TODO list, since it involves adding 
files to the repositories.

>
> I was also able to install the "Personal" commentary from the 
> CrossWire. It might be reasonable to hide that one if you're not 
> planning on bringing the editing functionality into play.
I do hope to make it functional, but you are right that it should be 
hidden for now.

>
> I'm sure I'll have more ideas and thoughts as I fiddle with it more, I 
> just wanted to dump this while it's all still fresh. Overall, it feels 
> very solid in terms of functionality. I'm quite impressed. Is there an 
> entry in our wiki or the source docs somewhere about how to setup a 
> development environment to build and hack on this?

http://devel.bibletime.info/wiki/BibleTime_Mobile
The build info is a bit summarized but suitable for someone that has 
built BibleTime Desktop.
I need to update the TODO list after all the feedback. :)
>
> --Greg
Many thanks,

Gary