First Steps
Last night I spent a lot of time looking at various bible translations, code, and opensource projects.
Step 1 is getting a good bible on the site. I'll be happy to link to gospelcom or anyone one else that's got good content, but no one is really offering true RSS style syndication or a real api so I'm going to have to host it on my site to get the type of seamless user experience I am looking for. It looks like the World English Bible will be the first translation with the launch. After an education in modern XML based bible translation and scholorship. I am in the process of evaluating opensource projects before I start from scratch. Right now there are two front-runners:
phpScripture - (formaly called phpBible) I especially like the way the verses appear as url's in a del.icio.us like fashion, but It loses a lot of the formatting and punctuation.
The other is, oddly enough the new phpBible
phpBible - from the onlineBible project. This is a much more sophisticated project that uses the OSIS format. Though ominously the home page demo isn't working
FYI,
The SWORD project has some great stuff, but unfortunatly their heavy JAVA emphasis doesn't work well with my hosting plans or expertise, so we will stick to PHP. (.NET and PHP are enough without throwing JAVA in the mix)
6 Comments:
Working with OSIS would be a real advantage as many different versions would be potentially available, including original language texts...
PS, I think OSIS has already begun to tackle some of the difficulties mentioned by your link on XML for Bible texts...
Have you checked out the ESV's web service/API?
http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/share/services/api/
Rick Brannan
ricoblog
Howdy,
Not sure if you've visited my site before, but I've already got tagging+bible working there. Perhaps we should talk?
:)
-z
Tim,
Thanks for the tips. I think that OSIS or one of the competing formats the like USFX or XSEM is the way to go. I found some code for doing OSIS in a php environment but ran into performance problems. It would be good to drop in different texts. Right now I am doing a quick and dirty WEB single line per verse version. I know this is going to make you and the rest of the scholar's cringe since you are losing all of the paragraphs, lines, and quotations. I will need to move to something better eventually
Zack,
We should definately talk. You've got a great website there. Unfortunately it is greek to me :)
but we may be able to work together on this.
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