maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Bible App for Maemo 5 Device(s)

	Flandry	2009-10-09 , 20:21
	Posts: 1,559 \| Thanked: 1,786 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Boston	#78

Originally Posted by ARJWright

Getting annotations/bookmarks/etc. trapped in an app is the wrong way to go with a Bible app IMO. I've ranted on that enough times, and still haven't been able to convince publishers/bible software makers that people want their data apart from the content they offer.

I'm a bit confused by this comment because it echoes my own sentiment, yet it seems like you're saying my approach is inherently bad because it somehow ignores this issue.

The real problem here is compatibility, of course. There's no general specification that i'm aware of for ebook annotations (is there for bible readers?), so overlaying the user-generated content on a generic interface (e.g.browser canvas) based on some peeping of the DOM seems actually fairly robust, in that it might be portable and outlast any particular implementation.

n.b. I have very little experience with UI programming or ECMA script, so I don't know how practical and scalable such an approach would be. After the discussion here, it just seems like the best way to do it.

Something more along the lines of a tap-and-hold on a term/verse with a context menu that comes up that says "Define | Compare | Bookmark | Annotate" and then moves to a new screen that has either a definition from a comparative source, cross references (from an index or comparative source), an input bookmark interface, or a simple notes interface (possibly with a tag field so it can be searched on later).

That's at least how my brain seems to work, along with many others who use digital bible devices/editions.

So you advocate a clean and uncluttered full-screen display of the text that only shows footnotes and cross-references when brought up through user interaction? That's definitely easier to provide, anyway...

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