[sword-devel] Other religions?

[Chris Little]

Mete,

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Mete Kural wrote:

> I did not mean to say that we should add the Quran to
> the list of the books of the Bible. Sorry for the
> confusion. What I meant to ask is whether it is
> possible in Sword for Windows to add the Quran as a
> book that could be browsed and displayed just like the
> books of the Bible. Meaning, using the exact same user
> interface. Perhaps another way to ask this is whether
> it is possible in Sword for Windows to add books to
> the list of books that are displayed using the Bible
> display user interface - not to the list of the books
> of the Bible. For example, could the Quran be added to
> the dropdown of books in SWORD for Windows as a book
> that will be displayed using the Bible display user
> interface instead of the general book user interface,
> not as a book of the Bible but simply as a book that
> is other than the books of the Bible but will be
> displayed using the same exact user interface that the
> books of the Bible are viewed? I think I used too many
> words above and made it confusing :) Basically can the
> Quran be displayed using the Bible display user
> interface in SWORD for Windows?

I didn't think you were really suggesting that we add the Qur'an as a book 
of the Bible, but that's effectively how it would look if we just added it 
as another book in the Bible book dropdown list.

To the broader question of whether we could present books other than the 
Bible using the same interface as the Bible display, the answer is: 
vaguely, yes.  Should we strive to achieve this?  I think so.  There are 
plenty of valuable applications besides the Qur'an that deserve fixing the 
display problems you pointed out and improving the interface to allow e.g. 
parallel displays.  Doing all of this is not trivial, but it should be 
done, nonetheless.  If you can get a look at BibleTime, you will actually 
see that most of the problems you identified are not problems in that 
frontend.  So the problems really boil down to a lack of people 
maintaining BibleCS (The SWORD Project for Windows) and a lack of people 
developing reasonable alternatives (e.g. wxSword/BibleStudy).
  
> That is great! So will the support that Daniel is adding to SWORD enable
> one to add books and display them using the same user interface that is
> used to display the books of the Bible?

He would have to answer that himself, but I believe the plan would 
essentially allow that.  I don't think it would be especially wise to 
present non-biblical books using what is fundamentally a Bible-oriented 
driver.

--Chris