[sword-devel] Chapter-centric browsing (was: iPhone frontend alpha screenshots)

[Ian Wagner]

On Nov 24, 2008, at 9:17 AM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 1:04 AM,  <seb.sword at koocotte.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 07:05:28AM -0500, Ian Wagner wrote:
>>> Please let me know any ideas/suggestions you have.
>>
>> Really nice !
>>
>> I have one suggestion you may find irrelevant: Don't cut on  
>> chapters but on
>> books.
>>
>> I know that most (all?) sword frontend are displaying text chapter by
>> chapter, and sword-API is probably build this way; but I think it's  
>> a very
>> bad idea. Chapters and verses are a common and useful way to locate  
>> a text
>> fragment, not a way to cut text. This create artificial  
>> separations. Except
>> for Psalms, books are a more relevant separation, text was not  
>> initialy
>> written in small parts.
>>
>> This may requiere a more tricky usage of libsword, keeping 3 or 4  
>> chapters
>> at the same time to display text as if it was the full book.
>
> I think this is in general a good idea (chapters are fairly artificial
> and far too often the chapter breaks are off by a verse).  I'm not
> even sure that having divisions on books is a good thing.  However,
> one thing that does need to be considered if any application goes that
> way (and I know of no Sword application that has, though it has been
> considered for BPBible and is still sort of on the TODO list) is how
> scrollbars and paging should work.  I know I sometimes go to the start
> or middle of a particular chapter and:
> 1. Use the scrollbar as a rough measure of how long the chapter is.
>
> 2. Scroll or page up/down to get to the start/end of a chapter from
> where I am.  While I agree chapter divisions aren't perfect, it is
> generally easier if you have been thrown into the middle of the
> chapter by a reference to go to the top and then go down to establish
> the context of the reference - this relies on scrolling/paging up/down
> being limited by the end of the chapter, and I'm not sure how if at
> all you can replace it.  Probably applications have or should have
> shortcuts to go to the start/end of a chapter, but even if they did
> Page Up and Page Down are wired in actions and "obvious", while doing
> something special to get to the start/end of a chapter requires
> thought, and I am busy focusing on the task at hand (establishing
> context and remembering where I have come from), not on using the
> software.
>
> I do think that in general removing the arbitrary chapter limitation
> would be a good thing, but these considerations and others could be
> important to getting it right.
>
> Jon
>
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page

Have any of you used the Libronix Digital Library System (previously  
known as Logos bible software)? They actually load up the ENTIRE book  
(whether it be a bible or commentary or whatnot) so you have a  
scrollbar indicator about as thick as a credit card :) Just thought  
I'd throw that out there. I'll have to think about this idea some more.

Ian
---------------
There's no place like 127.0.0.1