Some trends in e-Sword Resources

I spent six hours Monday, and eight hours Tuesday adding resources to Currently Available e-Sword Resources. I'm barely a quarter of the way thru the resources listed at YahooGroups. I won't get to the resources listed at esnips.com until next month, or maybe January.

I have noticed several disturbing trends.

• Little to no information in the "description" at the site that the resource is available from;
• An absence of copyright information in the "Details Table" of the resource;
• The same resource is uploaded to half a dozen sites;
  

There are two versions of The Babylonian Talmud, available as e-Sword resources. Most of the sites do not state which translation it is of. Each site has a slightly different archive name for it.

There are five versions of The Jerusalem Bible, in Spanish. At least the details table states what the differences are --- for three of them. The first edition, the second edition, and the third edition. One of the other versions is a complete mess. The fifth version is an attempt to clean up the mess that the fourth version has. None of them provide any information about the copyright holder, or whether or not permission to distribute the resources has been granted.

If it seems like I harp on this, it is because I want to use resources that can be legally distributed. I also don't want to download the same resource from two or more different sites, simply because it has a different name in the archive.

I also have been wondering about including resources in Z-XML, OSIS, and GBF format in the document. All three formats are trivial to convert to e-Sword.

I did decide against listing BibleWorks resources, because even though converting them to e-Sword is trivial, doing so is a copyright/license violation. I'll also point out that several resources listed appear to be from BibleWorks.

Why include "Copied from Bibleworks" in the description field of the details table, and leave all the other information about the resource out? [I don't remember which resources had that. ]

I haven't seen any resources that obviously were format shifted from either CROSS, or LDLS resources.

Requesting New Modules

Back on the 19 November, MIke Brandt announced on the e-Sword_tools list (amongst others) that he was working on a website that would list all of the publicly available e-Sword modules.

Somewhere in the resulting thread, a side discussion about how people could request new modules arose.

Proposed solutions are:
* A Wiki;
* Blog;
* A mailing list;
* A web forum;

Of course, back on 23 October 2006, Pastor Throop put a message on his web forum (http://pastorthroop.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=28) , asking if people had any module requests.

Meanwhile, over at http://www.thechan.com, a sticky note was put up on 13 October 2006 requesting that unorthodox translations not be requested on the website.

Over at http://cafe.naver.com/esword.cafe there is a never ending stream of requests for material, and an equally long stream of "How do I make modules for e-Sword?"
I can't tell if anybody is tracking, and working on the resources that are requested.

There is a long list of desired resources in Dutch on e-Sword_Nederlands at yahoogroups dot com.
The issue here is quite simply manpower. There are far more modules than one or two people can easily create.

You have the same issue with German on e-Sword_German at yahoogroups dot com.
Again, the same issue about manpower arises. So some people on that list have also made their request known of esword at yahoogroups dot com. Still, not much German material has been created. :(

If your interest is Romanian material, then Bible_Modules_developers_from_Romania@yahoogroups.com is very well organized. This doesn't mean that they will provide the requested material, but they do track what is requested,and where it is in the production line.

I"m not sure what happens on the Spanish support lists for e-Sword. Announcements of new modules are made frequently on those lists.

Which leaves the English language support lists. There are a number of messages on all of the lists, requesting specific modules. If a request catches a module creator's attention,and they have the time, then it might appear. Otherwise nothing happens to it. Nobody tracks the requests, much less where in the production cycle the material is in.

Why this blog?

I track a couple of blogs about other Bible Study Software. This blog is where I'll discuss the posts on those blogs, and how to, or what would be required fore-Sword to provide the same degree of functionality.

I'll also write about where I am in my ongoing effort to document e-Sword, e-Sword utility programs, and resources for e-Sword.