HP Touchpad apps

Discussions around the WebOS (Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, HP Touchpad) versions of the Gospel Library application.
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kmartind
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#31

Post by kmartind »

sririe wrote:This may already be a known issue. I just started using gospel library on my new touchpad and noticed that some of the books are missing. For example, the last three books are missing from the new testament and several of the last books of the OT are missing. Is this a known issue?

Edit: Actually this does sound like a known issue. It only happens in Portrait mode. A workaround is to turn the tablet sideways in order to select one of the last few items in the listing.
LEGALEASE
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Gospel Library Update?

#32

Post by LEGALEASE »

Maybe I have missed it and that is possible, but has there been an update to Gospel Library for the HP Touchpad since October General Conference? I understand that the people doing this are volunteers and I really do appreciate their service. Also I have no understanding as to what it takes to make the updates and incorporate new material like GC. For now I have downloaded the Ensign in PDF and that is working, but it would really be nice to have it incorporated like the April conference.

Before getting my HP TP I had used Yanceyware on my PDA (Dell Axium). Great program and still love it. They had a program that allowed me to convert my Gospel Library 2001 books to the Yanceyware format. Is something like that possible for GL for the HP TP? Again, I have no real appreciation as to what it would take to make something like that happen, but I would just like to put that on my wish list for Christmas.

I appreciate all that has been done on this format. I just hope that more updates are coming in the near future.
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jkentner
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#33

Post by jkentner »

LEGALEASE wrote:Maybe I have missed it and that is possible, but has there been an update to Gospel Library for the HP Touchpad since October General Conference? I understand that the people doing this are volunteers and I really do appreciate their service. Also I have no understanding as to what it takes to make the updates and incorporate new material like GC. For now I have downloaded the Ensign in PDF and that is working, but it would really be nice to have it incorporated like the April conference.

Before getting my HP TP I had used Yanceyware on my PDA (Dell Axium). Great program and still love it. They had a program that allowed me to convert my Gospel Library 2001 books to the Yanceyware format. Is something like that possible for GL for the HP TP? Again, I have no real appreciation as to what it would take to make something like that happen, but I would just like to put that on my wish list for Christmas.

I appreciate all that has been done on this format. I just hope that more updates are coming in the near future.

Why is the touchpad app not like the iPad app in that your books are separate from the app as far as updates?
kmartind
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#34

Post by kmartind »

jkentner wrote:Why is the touchpad app not like the iPad app in that your books are separate from the app as far as updates?
Primarily for historical reasons I believe. The app was initially developed for the original Palm Pre/Pixi with webOS 1.x. It works as is, and only needed relatively minor modifications for the newer platforms (but with the content still bundled into the app). To change the way it works now would probably require significantly re-writing much of it, so it's in effect a choice between maintaining something that works now on all webOS devices versus developing something new that might work better in the future, probably only on the newer devices, and only after volunteers spend a great deal more time on it (if they even have the time/inclination to do so). That makes it kind of a tough call unless someone is really fired up about it and willing/able to put in all the extra work necessary.
Of course anyone with more info can feel free to correct me, that's just basically what I've concluded based on previous discussions.
There's also the question of getting the content into the correct format and into the app, and whether that's really sustainable long-term, but for now I'm mostly happy that we're able to run Gospel Library on webOS at all. It could become increasingly less useful over time if content isn't able to be updated in a timely fashion, so it would be great if it were improved to allow for external content updates.
afanofosc
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#35

Post by afanofosc »

I have been working on adding content to the webOS Gospel Library application. If you would like to try my unofficial version, which includes October 2011 General Conference and the 2012 George Albert Smith manual (plus tons and tons of other content - basically everything that you can download for the IOS and Android versions), then you can grab the IPK here: http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/org.lds. ... .4_all.ipk

In addition to the application you will need to grab the content, which is not yet downloadable from within the application. I separated it out into its own zip archive because it is a large amount of data and storing it separately from the application is a step toward supporting in-app content downloading (which I am working on). You can get the content here: http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/webos_content.zip

The zip should be extracted to the root of the drive that is created when you connect your device to your computer in USB Drive mode. On a PC it might show up in Explorer as D: or E:. Use 7zip, WinZip or Windows built-in support for compressed folders to extract the zip to your device. It should create a folder called ".ldssa" which contains a "content" folder which has all the original XML content plus all the additional content that I have added. If you have any questions about this you can email me at afanofosc at comcast dot net and I will try to help.

John Hansen
kmartind
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#36

Post by kmartind »

afanofosc wrote:I have been working on adding content to the webOS Gospel Library application. If you would like to try my unofficial version, which includes October 2011 General Conference and the 2012 George Albert Smith manual (plus tons and tons of other content - basically everything that you can download for the IOS and Android versions), then you can grab the IPK here...
Thanks! This looks excellent at first glance, and it appears you fixed a couple other bugs while you were in there too. Is there a plan to merge some or all of the changes into the main project? I think one of the previous concerns was that making the application depend on a third-party to host the content was less desirable than being able to pull directly from the church servers, but the church servers had stopped delivering the desired format, and on-device conversion seemed likely to be problematic, so the best course of action was unclear.

Still, from a user's perspective, having new content available is a huge plus, even if the converted content has to be downloaded by hand from a third party site (that someone would need to maintain).
danpass
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#37

Post by danpass »

kmartind wrote:Thanks! This looks excellent at first glance, and it appears you fixed a couple other bugs while you were in there too. Is there a plan to merge some or all of the changes into the main project? I think one of the previous concerns was that making the application depend on a third-party to host the content was less desirable than being able to pull directly from the church servers, but the church servers had stopped delivering the desired format, and on-device conversion seemed likely to be problematic, so the best course of action was unclear.

Still, from a user's perspective, having new content available is a huge plus, even if the converted content has to be downloaded by hand from a third party site (that someone would need to maintain).

I'm fairly certain that John's goal is that Gospel Library for webOS will download its content from church servers. The package and content he has made available on sourceforge is an intermediate step in that direction.
afanofosc
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#38

Post by afanofosc »

I am definitely hopeful that I can merge in my changes to the official release. My goal definitely is to get the code to the point where it can download all the content from the same servers that are used by the Android and IOS versions of the Gospel Library app. The new content that I have put into the zip should be the same as what you can download from those servers using the JSON platform ID and the English language ID, though currently (and sadly) with a slightly different naming convention for the filenames - which I need to fix.

One challenge that the webOS team will eventually have to face is replacing the large chunk of code that displays the old XML content for the scriptures and the other content that comes built-in with the official release version so that it instead uses the JSON files that you can download from the LDS servers. This involves fiddling with (i.e., rewriting) the bookmarks and notes feature and how footnotes are currently handled, etc...

John Hansen
ljerryd
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Gospel Library Update (Unofficial)

#39

Post by ljerryd »

I loaded John's updates and they are amazing! Ensign magazines back to the beginning, Conference as well. New Manuals, Even book two of the General Handbook. Thanks for a great job and the help!
afanofosc
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#40

Post by afanofosc »

Just to be clear, the webos_content.zip does not contain all the documents that the application lists as a menu item. That is simply due to the volume of data required for all the magazines. If you navigate into a document that is not on your device you will get a message saying that it could not load the file.

I have a zip called webos_content_full.zip which I have not uploaded. It is 183mb. The webos_content.zip currently up on my sourceforge site is only 75mb. Currently, in this smaller zip there are only magazine issues from 2011.

I can upload issues from previous years if anyone needs more than the ones in the webos_content.zip.

John Hansen
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