Notices

The main thing that I can see that they would be worried about is that there would now be an open-source implementation to read their file format, which would theoretically make it easier to convert the modules to another format and pirate them. This is a bit of a non-sequitur, though, because if their easy enough to read that we can do it, a pirate could also read them without our help.

I've only got a few min, sorry for the brevity in my responses:

Olive Tree, Laridian, etc. make their money off of the cross-licensing of the content that they use to make the modules (they purchase a license to produce and resell to a certain number of persons, they charge you a piece of that licensee fee plus development costs related to making the content fit their format and reader, plus any support costs).

The formats that the modules use tends to also be proprietory as well. Their profts come from selling you a reader that (at one time) has licensed content which may or may not be as featured as that content+reader from another electronic bible software maker. Creating a Bible reader that reads their formats is a catch 22 for them. They get the additional market, but the lose control of (some) of the exclusivity that their reader application (the platform) provides.

Personally, I wish they all used the same format. With the reader being the real differentator. This has been possible for a long time, and has been argued too much. No electronic Bible software company is moving in that direction as the profit margins for this market tends to be slim as it is and most want to keep their current streams instead of opening that up. Ask me in a year or two how opening up the NYTimes has kept them from going under and I'll have my point there.

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Like some of you, I too would prefer just a basic reader that then uses a plug-in based feature to add the additional functionality. From the side of application design, if you make a solid and simple foundation, adding functionality later becomes easier, and in some cases, smarter. For example, maps. A maps module could be created by NavPress or LivePlanet, where they charge for the module (it costs time and money to develop/test), but it works within app easily. OSS allows that, and it keeps the field open for innovation for all IMO.

Pirating is mainly a concern where people see more value in the product than what it is being charged for. The solution there is really simple

The numbers aren't *yet* in Maemo's favor as being a duitful platform for them to care about (smartphones are 13 or 23% of the total mobile phone installed base; high-end smartphones are smaller than 30% of that number; Maemo is smaller stil; there are over 4 billion registered mobile phone users).

If Katana turns out to be a pefect model for a Bible application (simple basic UI/UX, plug-in system for additional modules, open development), then that would defintely get the eyes open towards more profitable platforms and could endear change to happen. Not that I'm not in favor of that, but it wasn't the reason I started the thread.

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A Bible application should be simple. Open the app, text is there. One click to search/go-to; swipe to move pages. Any more steps that that is too complicated and takes the focus from reading the Text to navigating the software.

Something to remember is that most of these readers are free for specific platforms (just not Maemo). If we contact people like Olive Tree and just explain what we are doing and that we are adding a plug-in to read their resources and would like to know the best way to refer users to buy their products, my guess is that they will not have a problem at all. We could even ask them if they would be interested in helping. Who knows, if they like the idea of a reader on a platform they do not support, they might even be able to provide some documentation on their format saving us countless hours.

One of the reasons people have conflicts with established companies in situations like this is due to not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Rule number one of public relations is to tell the truth and tell it often to those who are affected.

From purely a business perspective, it would make total business sense for someone like Olive Tree to help a project like Katana. Since they do not make money from their reader, the company could gain a profit (By selling resources) without expending any resources that is a win-win scenario. It is just a thought.

Yeah, that actually was the only thing that I came up with. But I figured at worst case; if we could get no commitment to help us do a open source method from any of them (their are several and maybe one of them would be willing to take the risk to expand their market share w/o any cost to them) -- we could offer to close source this as a plug-in. That might be enough to convince them to allow us to do it with their blessing.

Nathan

That would definitely be a good alternate option to bring to the table.

other bible readers like s60bible (free reader) read the Palm Bible+ files without any issues.

I would like a double tap on the screen to bring the navigation menus for the books of the bibles

Just for people to get ideas from what's going on with other platforms, there's a list of mobile (and not-so-mobile) Bible applications here. In terms of getting acquainted with what is out there for all platforms, this is a solid listing.

Logos just announced their's as well (for iPhone/iPod Touch devices), and its taking a lot of the cues that I've spoken about in terms of UI/UX (disclaimer of sorts: I've posted about this UI/UX several times on MMM, and was hoping that someone would get to doing it).

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The S60 Bible Reader was developed from the outset to use Bible+'s resources. In some respects, you can call it a port of the original BibleReader, with some edits to bring it more inline with Bible+ afterwards.

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flux41; I agree that it makes sense. The key is making sure that it makes sense to them. They are a for-profit company who might do well to have Katana fit what their needs are. And then again, it might not fit. I've already started that communication to them, and we'll see what happens.

I attended a religious conference over the weekend where there was a lot of discussion of the state of religious web resources and mobile apps. Talked with a friend who is working on some things for Android about collaborating, so i was hoping to dig into the existing code this coming weekend when i have time. What's the status of the code? Should i be expecting an upload to SVN, or just pull down the new version of rapier whenever it shows up?

It looks like Katana's svn repository currently only contain a web page:

https://garage.maemo.org/scm/?group_id=1084

Rapier source code is available in the svn repository:

https://garage.maemo.org/scm/?group_id=200

Fremantle version is in the main trunk.

However, i would not recommand using Rapier as a source of inspiration, or if you do, as a source of inspiration on how not to write an application :-)

I would suggest to dig in some desktop project such as bible time (qt), bp bible (python and wx if i remember correctly) , and xiphos (gtk, and c++ if i remember correctly).

Ah, so the Rapier update is already available.

I looked at the different sword readers back at the beginning of the thread, but the direction seemed to shift to adapting from Rapier for a start. In any case, i'm on the Katana team in garage, but was preferring to start from the code that has been discussed a bit than jumping in with my own. Nathanael is the admin for the project...