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Just some suggestions...

Submitted by mel on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 07:29

First of all, I want to say that this is an awesome Bible study tool. It makes the study of scripture so much easier. Making this part of the PortableApps made it even sweeter. Anyway, here’re some feature requests that I hope you’d consider:

User Interface:

  1. Bible Text Navigation Toolbar: A toolbar for navigating through a verse or chapter (like “<< Previous Chapter < Previous Verse | Next Verse > Next Chapter >>).
  2. Panel maximize by double-click: I hope it’s possible to maximize the panel by double-clicking on the panel title bar.
  3. Change highlight options: Ability to change the highlight options, like use different colors of actual text highlight instead of just changing the color of the text.
  4. Expandable book drop-down for the books search: I wish it’s possible to be able to resize the drop-down to allow a bigger view for the list of books instead of scrolling down to the book you want to go to.

Keyboard-friendlies:

  1. Auto-complete: I hope there’s an auto-complete for things where you type stuff in like the drop-down list that has the Bible books at the top left corner of the program whatever it’s called or the “search in Bible for” keyboard shortcut. Btw, I love the fact that it’s similar to the Enso UI.
  2. Adding keyboard shortcuts for other actions like maximizing/restoring a panel. Moving the focus from one panel to another, etc.

Added features:

  1. Scratchpad: A way to enter in notes in case there’s something you want to remember? Kinda like notepad inside BPBible
  2. Organizing books: In the Books panel, it’d be great if we could personalize the order of books like dragging a certain bible text to the top or bottom.
  3. Deleting books: I hope there’s an automated way to delete a book you don’t want to use.
  4. Ability to search only within a certain panel (Sometimes the commentaries are a bit long and it’s useful to be able to search just within the commentary)
  5. Save history: Ability to save the history of what you’ve studied. Plus I wish the history entry wouldn’t repeat itself. If the verse is already in the history list just move the highlight to that instead of adding it again to the list. It’d also be great if it’s possible to remove entries on the history, single entry of the entire list.
  6. Commentary contents: Ok, I’m not really sure if this is possible but I’m having problems with some of the commentaries from the SWORD project. Some commentaries only have comments for certain books and I was hoping there’s a way to see what books or verses have commentaries instead of just going to a verse and hoping that there’s a commentary there (I wonder if I’m saying it right, sorry not a native English speaker)

Anyway, hope I didn’t sound too demanding. Even without these features I still love the program but I do hope you’d consider my suggestions. God bless!

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#1Submitted by Chris Morgan on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 10:33.

:-)

I'm glad that you like my/our PortableApps.com edition of BPBible (here just in case someone who reads this doesn't know what we're talking about)! (I'm the website and PortableApps.com guy, and haven't developed anything much for BPBible itself other than a bit of code to make settings paths configurable - for the PortableApps.com version!)

User Interface:

  1. Bible Text Navigation Toolbar: for keyboard shortcuts, see http://code.google.com/p/bpbible/wiki/KeybordShortcuts. Although a Bible text navigation toolbar is not there (and probably won't be, but you never know), there is the chapter bar - a pretty nifty invention! With the keyboard, you can go previous chapter (F5), next chapter (F8), previous verse (F9) and next verse (F12). I believe that Ben copied those shortcuts from e-Sword... don't really know why though :P
  2. Panel maximize by double-click: I believe that this is a deficiency in the underlying panel framework (wxAUI). Until BPBible's frontend changes to XUL, which Ben is investigating, it looks as though you're stuck with clicking on the maximize button.
  3. Change highlight options: I believe that this is one of the things on Ben's it-would-be-nice-to-have list. I agree that it would be very useful. It may be included in 0.5, when Added features/1 is (I think) planned for.
  4. Expandable book drop-down for the books search: I presume you mean the two pulldowns in "Search Range"? If so, well, I normally use the custom text field if I want custom ranges, but as for a larger dropdown, I don't know whether Ben's planning on doing anything about that; it seems to me though that there could be a problem with working out what sort of height could be taken without going off the bottom of the screen. Probably smaller pulldowns are more "user-friendly" as well. See what Ben thinks when he reads this.

Keyboard friendliness
Ah, a big point for computer techies... I like the keyboard :-)

  1. Auto-complete: ah, now I know what Enso is... now I'll try it :-) Looks good! No, Ben's inspiration for the "s" and "g" look-and-feel was from Google Desktop's Ctrl-double-tap popup for quick search. As for auto-complete, I don't think it's planned, but it might come. Also note that you can even type things like "ex39.30" - it doesn't need to be in full.
  2. Adding keyboard shortcuts: yes, I think that it's good having more keyboard shortcuts... something like the old F6 for switch panel back in the days of MS QBasic... ah, those were the good old days ;-) But seriously, I think that it's probably not practical nowadays, unless it's as a config option - "Advanced keyboard shortcuts" or something like that. And Ben doesn't seem to like config options :-(

Added features:

  1. Scratchpad: I believe that this is planned for 0.5 along with a "personal commentary" thing.
  2. Organizing books: Hmm... I like the idea! Currently though it's purely alphabetical. See what Ben says. I like the idea though.
  3. Deleting books: this is a planned feature for the 0.4 release, due within one month.
  4. Ability to search only within a certain panel: uh, are you using BPBible 0.3.1? In 0.3.1, you can only search within Bibles. In the SVN repository, it supports searching commentaries, other books and dictionaries - but all separately.
  5. Save history: I don't know where this is at. I've thought that a web browser-style history could be good. Let's see what Ben says. But there is already a similar thing, in tagging, which Jon's working on. It should be polished enough for release in 0.4. If you want a preview, you can get a copy from SVN. Good luck at getting it working
  6. Commentary contents: I don't think that this is possible normally, but Ben might come up with a nice workaround. The problem is that the commentaries often have comments on e.g. Genesis 1:1-N. With the way they're done though, that means that Genesis 1:1 has all of that, and Genesis 1:2-N are blank :-(. I think that a good way of doing it would be to check that if there is no content for a verse in a commentary, then look back until you get to the last "verse" with content, and display that.

(P.S. it's nice seeing someone using HTML formatting properly in a forum... well done :-))
#2Submitted by mel on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 10:18.

User Interface: Expandable

User Interface:

  1. Expandable book drop-down for the books search: I presume you mean the two pulldowns in "Search Range"? If so, well, I normally use the custom text field if I want custom ranges, but as for a larger dropdown, I don't know whether Ben's planning on doing anything about that; it seems to me though that there could be a problem with working out what sort of height could be taken without going off the bottom of the screen. Probably smaller pulldowns are more "user-friendly" as well. See what Ben thinks when he reads this.<comment> I was actually hoping that the drop-down would be resizeable. It's a pain to scroll down to the book and chapter you need.

Keyboard friendliness

  1. Adding keyboard shortcuts: yes, I think that it's good having more keyboard shortcuts... something like the old F6 for switch panel back in the days of MS QBasic... ah, those were the good old days ;-) But seriously, I think that it's probably not practical nowadays, unless it's as a config option - "Advanced keyboard shortcuts" or something like that. And Ben doesn't seem to like config options :-( <comment> :-(

P.S. it's nice seeing someone using HTML formatting properly in a forum... well done :-)) <comment> Thanks, didn't want to make it hard for you to read through my long post. Don't get too used to it though :p

Additional Feature requests
Here're some more things you might wanna consider adding.

  1. History position: Ok, I'm not sure if this is a feature request or a bug report but I noticed that the History pane contents is pegged on top of the fold. If you have a long list, you'd have to scroll down to get to the latest verses you've been looking at. It'd be better if it would focus on the current verse.
  2. Moving books around in the verse comparison pane: It's be great if we could move the versions around. I suggest putting a "move up/down" option on the Choose books to view dialog box.
  3. Adding a Favorites section on the Books pane: I was hoping we could add a section that has Favorites were we could put it the different books together (like bibles, books, dictionaries, etc.) After installing SWORD books it's a little hard to navigate through the ones you often use.

That's pretty much it. One last thing, I noticed a bug on the Verse search dialog box. Some of the keyboard shortcuts doesn't work. It only works when the Find field is highlighted. When you select a verse or move to another field, the keyboard shortcuts stop working.
#3Submitted by Ben Morgan on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 02:28.

Some points to add User

Some points to add

User Interface:
2. Panel maximize by double-click:
I just committed this to SVN. It was a relatively trivial change.

3. Change highlight options:
I presume you mean highlighting the background around the text. This isn't possible at the moment due to technical restrictions.

Keyboard friendliness:
1. Auto-complete:
I have thought about doing it. Autocomplete isn't likely to be particularly easy to implement on the GUI side, I'm afraid. This won't get into 0.4
2. Adding keyboard shortcuts for other actions:
I just committed Ctrl-F5 to restore, Ctrl-F10 to maximize (like in word). Switching between windows would be a little harder, but still relatively easy. Probably won't be in 0.4

Added features:
2. Organizing books:
I would like to see this feature sometime. Also, groupings of modules would be good. This definitely won't get into 0.4.

4. Ability to search only within a certain panel
This currently isn't really feasible due to technical restrictions (can't update the page after setting it, and don't want to reload the page every letter typed)

5. Save history:
Currently history is just like in a browser. Making it do differently for a verse previously in the list could be confusing. I'm not sure what the best behaviour here is. Just for the record, this is nothing to do with tagging.

6. Commentary contents:
This is Issue 25:
http://code.google.com/p/bpbible/issues/detail?id=25

This would be relatively easy to do.
#4Submitted by mel on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 09:18.

Great to hear that some of

Great to hear that some of the suggestions will make it to 0.4 Can't wait to get a hold of that.
#5Submitted by mivan on Fri, 11/07/2008 - 04:46.

One more for the User Interface or Added Features

A long awaited feature not found in other bibles is being able to change the language of the interface, and the Books names as well.

I've just found the portable version some minutes ago and instantly felt this will be part of my favorites apps and will start traveling with me.

Many many thanks for this nice app
#6Submitted by Ben Morgan on Sat, 11/08/2008 - 00:19.

I presume by changing the

I presume by changing the language of the book names you mean for Bible books (i.e. James -> Jakobo or whatever).

This (and changing the UI language) will be in 0.4