Tech Forum

I can navigate through all scripture in Italian too but searching!
When I press search button it crash. Actually exit the program suddenly.
I start wcSView.exe from a comman line. It show me the list of libraries during startup but nothing at the end!
I try with data stored into HDD, instead of CDROM, but the result doesn't change.
Because my motivation stops here, I'll continue to use the online resources.

I have spent the past few days looking for ways to get an OFFLINE version of the scriptures running on linux. I use YanCEyWare on my pda but the desktop version is based on .net and that really dosnt like Wine very much. So far the best I have come up with is simple .html files that I downloaded already compiled together. For the Sunday School manual then I'm stuck with just the .pdf

lds-get is a pretty nice utillity, if you can get it to work. The instuctions are a bit vague and it is easy to imagine a novice getting lost using it. Also, it dosnt pull them from the site that you use when you go to the online version of the scriptures. it uses a sort of online archive that isnt as complete. For example, all the Teachings of the Prophets are there EXCEPT for the Joseph Smith one, which is the one that we are using this year.

Well, I admit that I am lazy so I just used wget (or maybe it was curl) and pulled it down into a big 1.5GB directory structure on my laptop. Now the stinker here is that every link to, say, 1 Nephi 1 points to the entire chapter so I have a copy of the entire chapter a dozen or so times. Some softlink magic could cut the size down, probably by ten times easily, but I haven't been bored enough to pull that off yet. Another option I've used in the past is to point Adobe Acrobat at a site and had it crawl it into one nice PDF and that works very nicely too.

It should be trivial for something to be created that is semi-polished, though, and cross-platform. I'll even do it if there's enough demand for it. I need to check out the lds-get thing first though.

mkmurray wrote:I doubt the Church would dedicate time to such a project on their own dime and time. It just wouldn't be worth it to reach out to a small minority, unless the code was already written portable enough. However, I think it's a great idea for an open-source project. In fact, there is already a project or two about doing a web and/or cross-platform scripture study program. The thread is [thread=113]here[/thread].

I disagree that linux is a small minority. In fact, linux is strong overseas and a more affordable option for members living in developing countries. I think the church should support linux just because of members living in poor countries.

ubuntuFan wrote:I disagree that linux is a small minority. In fact, linux is strong overseas and a more affordable option for members living in developing countries. I think the church should support linux just because of members living in poor countries.

I agree it is a more affordable option, especially in developing countries where finances are limited. But I still have my doubts that it is what I would consider "strong." Perhaps the words "small minority" is a bit exaggerating.

As for the "support linux just because of members living in poor countries," I don't know if you mean this idea of scriptures software or just every Church software. I don't think the Church should just start supporting linux for the heck of it. I think there needs to be a consistent rollout so that training and support is uniform across the board. I'm not saying rolling out linux is a bad idea (it'd actually be cool to see the Church cut some costs on licensed OS and software), I just think it is expensive to redo your whole desktop image, software, and training resources.

It appears I posted this a long time ago, and I'm not sure why I was so harsh on an idea of doing a linux version of the Scripture software. It would be terrific I agree! I've used it and it is extremely useful for in-depth study. I think the real decision would depend on what technologies the current software is written with and how portable the product already is. I don't think it wise to write another version just for a handful of Linux users (and I really do mean a handful; seriously like less than 10% of users of the software would be Linux users).

I would love to see a version of the scriptures come out for Linux, especially for the new types of PCs that have been coming out lately. With the advent of the Eee PC and related mini-notebooks, the need for applications to run on Linux has increased. These small notebooks would be perfect for use in church. They are small and would be easy to carry around. You may still be able to run Wine on these notebooks, but it would be better to have native applications. The Church would be wise to release a scripture program that can be used in Windows, Linux and for OSX.

Another thought came to me while looking around. A version of the scriptures for the Kindle would be nice (probably exists).

I seem to recall talk of an open-source project to develop a scripture viewer. I thought it had Linux as at least one of its target platforms. If there isn't one, why not start one?

If I understand correctly, the scriptural text can be downloaded in a useful form for local storage and use. Several years ago, I wrote a small C program to convert the old floppy-based product to plain text, one line per verse, which works great for 'grep' and friends. I have another small program that takes a reference as arguments and outputs the specified verses in a paragraph-per-verse format. A reasonable interactive program shouldn't be too terribly difficult. I suspect defining the requirements would take nearly as much time as writing the code (maybe more).

Here's a Linux reader with LDS available scriptures and literature that's gaining popularity...

http://tony.maro.net/ossramblings/thummim.php

Mike

rmrichesjr wrote:I seem to recall talk of an open-source project to develop a scripture viewer. I thought it had Linux as at least one of its target platforms. If there isn't one, why not start one?

If I understand correctly, the scriptural text can be downloaded in a useful form for local storage and use. Several years ago, I wrote a small C program to convert the old floppy-based product to plain text, one line per verse, which works great for 'grep' and friends. I have another small program that takes a reference as arguments and outputs the specified verses in a paragraph-per-verse format. A reasonable interactive program shouldn't be too terribly difficult. I suspect defining the requirements would take nearly as much time as writing the code (maybe more).

We are looking at providing the current "online" scriptures in an offline mode. If approved, then this product would run natively on Linux under Java.

Tom

tomw wrote:We are looking at providing the current "online" scriptures in an offline mode. If approved, then this product would run natively on Linux under Java.

Tom

Cool!!! Please keep us posted.