[sword-devel] MacSword 0.4 beta

[Christian Renz]

Thanks for the quick help, Will -- that did the trick. And I was
already wondering why the menus and dialogs look so very similar to
the last version :).

I'm not quite sure why I wrote "thanks for your feedback" in the last
e-mail, I meant "thanks for your good work" :). Anyway, here's some
feedback:

- I really like the WebCore rendering. Looks even nicer, especially
  with the new appearance options. Would be nice to be able to change
  the font for non-latin script modules, though, but that is something
  for later releases.

- The printing output looks great! Especially with the new advanced
  references, this is a great tool to have a few scripture references
  in a nice layout. Would be nice to be able to change the book title
  display. E.g. instead of having the book name on top of the verse,
  add a "(John 3:16-17)" at the end of the verse. That would work
  nicely for a list of references from different books in the bible.

- I like the back/forward toolbar items and the Cmd+Arrow keys
  control. Really helpful!

- Overall, the new toolbar is a huge improvement, especially the quick
  module pop-up and the advanced reference field. Also, being able to
  customize the toolbar will be a real blessing in the future as new
  options are added.

- I like that it saves the window positions.

- I'm having trouble opening the "Find" window. It won't show
  up. Would be nice to have a "Find" field for the toolbar also.

- The module information is great; I find "=About=" a bit obtrusive,
  though. Maybe "(About)" as entry for the book list would look
  better. Also, maybe instead of displaying the language code, you can
  display the full language name ("Chinese" instead of "zh", for example).

- The service (sword://KJV/matt3.16) works perfectly now from Camino
  and Safari. How about making it sword:KJV/matt3.16 and
  introduce sword:/matt3.16 to open the verse in a "default" bible
  translation? When Timothy Berners-Lee was asked recently whether he
  regrets something about inventing the web, he said "double
  slash". ;)

- MacSword sometimes crashes on me. I wouldn't take that too
  seriously, though -- Safari crashes on me all the time on this
  machine ever since the hard disk was full once. I'll try again on my
  PowerBook. 

- The book titles are not displayed correctly in titles when containing
  non-ASCII characters. E.g. Matthew should be "Matthäus" in
  German. It is correctly displayed in the book popup list as well as
  in the text itself, but the title (book name) on top says "Matth%us"
  (actually, it is the per mil sign, rather than the percent sign). 

- I'm having trouble with typing in advanced references. I think the
  problem is that the values of the book popup and the chapter popup
  are combined. E.g. if the chapter popup is set to "2", and I type in
  "Gen 3", the window title will say "Gen 3 2" and the window will
  display "Genesis 32". If you now type "Gen 3" into the book popup
  again, the window title is set to "gen 3 32", and the content
  displayed will be 2 Kings 19. (Probably the 332nd chapter in the
  bible? ;-))

One thing I'd like to see in MacSword is transliteration (maybe
similar to the way Strong's numbers are displayed) and dictionary
pop-ups. Can the bibletime filters be used to display transliteration?
I'd love to help with coding for these, but I don't quite know where
to start.

Anyway, I hope the feedback is helpful! Thanks again for your very
good work. MacSword is getting better all the time!

Greetings,
   Christian

-- 
crenz@web42.com - http://www.web42.com/crenz/ - http://www.web42.com/

"What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised
by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument."
    -- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man