[sword-devel] Logos Personal Book Builder

[Jonathan Morgan]

Hi Greg,

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 4:45 AM, Greg Hellings <greg.hellings at gmail.com>wrote:

> I have pursued the avenue of docx -> Bible conversion in the past and,
> allow me to state unequivocally, it is incredibly complex.  The sheer
> number of ways to mark up the same item and material makes any sort of
> attempt at such a conversion almost impossible to conceive.  I never
> completed the project (my apologies to David for that), but I did get
> so far as to have the base text working in SWORD. However, headings
> were in the wrong places, foot notes were acknowledged but not
> present, and many other things were very wrong with the results I
> produced.  Not to mention that the parsing was highly dependent upon
> that one text and the manner in which its editor had elected to markup
> his works.  I have since come into possession of better tools which
> would make some parts of the process easier, but by no means would it
> be simple.
>

I'm not surprised.  I don't know how long it took Logos to develop their PBB
and how many programmers were involved, but I do know it was originally
tentatively planned for 2010.  As you say, I think a big part of the problem
is the number of ways a thing can be represented as (plus the general
problem of trying to map from presentation to meaning - it's also possible
that Logos has a more presentational format than you are targetting).  I
think Logos handles things like verses using pre-defined styles, but I've
only played with it, not read the documentation.


> Producing a general book might have better results, but it would still
> be a monumental undertaking for anyone who wanted to tackle it.  I am
> up to my ears right now in other projects or I might consider it.
> Also, I lack any sort of source texts which would make it worthwhile
> for myself to undertake the project.
>

Indeed.

Jon


>
> --Greg
>
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Benjamin Misja <alvanx at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > The new PBB feature sounds exciting and I will definitely see if I can
> > integrate some papers and additional bible translations into my Logos
> library.
> >
> > I would think that having a comparable feature for making SWORD modules
> would
> > give a huge boost to both the available amount of books and community
> > participation. I think SWORD should make tools like this available to the
> > community at any cost. It would take making modules out of the hands of
> those
> > who know at least regular expressions and some programming language and
> put it
> > into the hands of anybody who would want to make a module. I know I'd be
> > making a lot of them if only I could! It would make SWORD so much cooler
> and
> > more dynamic. ;-)
> >
> > Just my humble opinion,
> >
> > Ben
> >
> >
> > Am Sonntag, 14. August 2011, 23:28:39 schrieb Jonathan Morgan:
> >> I don't usually comment on competing products, but I thought the new
> >> (long-expected) Logos Personal Book Builder was worth commenting on.
>  You
> >> can find a post about it at
> >> http://blog.logos.com/2011/08/personal-book-builder-the-inside-scoop/.
>  The
> >> main difference from most software is the fact that books are built by
> >> importing a docx file rather than entering any text into an editor,
> which
> >> hopefully means minimal work to make it happen.  The created books can
> then
> >> just be shared as you wish, even through the main Logos servers.
> >>
> >> I personally do not intend to do anything about this, but I thought it
> worth
> >> mentioning to see what others thought of the idea.  Certainly
> difficulties
> >> converting the text into a usable form seem to crop up quite a bit for
> >> SWORD, and we have no knowledge of how many people just give up without
> >> asking (I know there is a project to work with OpenOffice to create
> >> Genbooks, but I have never used it and so do not know how capable and
> how
> >> automatic it is).
> >>
> >> Thoughts?
> >>
> >> 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
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/attachments/20110815/8d876a5c/attachment.html>