Bible commentaries, file formats, etc. [#994926]

Hi,

[I realize these questions really belong on the regular Drupal Bible forum, but the forum is currently broken (gives CAPTCHA-related errors) and it's impossible to post anything there, so I am posting this here.]

I am currently researching technology options for a website I am starting to build, and came across this module. I am trying to determine if the Drupal Bible module would be a good fit for what I am trying to do, so I have a couple of questions:

1. I noticed you currently have some functionality for displaying links to relevant commentaries at the bottom of the page. What I would like to have is a Wiki-style functionality where users would be able to submit quotes (in my case, from classical Jewish and patristic sources) that are relevant to the verse/passage being read. These submissions will have several required metadata fields (e.g. author, full reference, source of quote, etc.) Eventually I will also have these submissions moderated, but that's a separate issue. Is this functionality something that you are thinking of adding some time in the future? And if not, how difficult would it be to integrate this functionality with your module? Also, do you know of any other modules that may be helpful in implementing this?

2. I noticed that you are using your own format for Bible files (.bc), rather than one of the common XML-based formats, such as OSIS or ThML. Is there a reason you decided against using those? There is a lot of content available in those formats, and texts can be easily converted from one XML format to another. Also, using an XML-based format would allow the users of your module much greater control over formating and presentation, not to mention other standard XML benefits (e.g., turning a site into a Web service and building a mobile client for it).

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Eugene

Comments

Comment #1

MikeLee_Birdy commented 13 December 2010 at 13:50

Dear Eugene:
Sorry for the CAPTCHA problem. I think this will fix after system updated.
To answer your questions in following paragraph. But I'm not so sure that I make your point in correct manner, so please give me some feedback so that we can discuss more.
1. All commentaries come from the bible-module home site. I provide a web service for all bible-module sites to fetch this information. I suggest some solutions:
A. You can give me your quotes sources, I'll to import them into home site database;
B. I can write a bible-data edit page for all who willingly to contribute bible resources. I think this will more approach your Wiki-style issue. But this cost some days to develop.
C. If you want these quotes use only in private site, I think this will be a BIG change for bible module now....

2. To make a new .bc file, the simple reason is: there's no tags. And I found more benefits: .bc is plain text, easy to edit, easy to write simple program to make .bc files...
I've try to convert some XML-based format bible into .bc file. But I cannot make sure that copyright issue, and I found some bibles in these XML-based format has some errors in that format. But I've try 2 ways to make this module more open:
A. Convert XML-based bibles into .bc format. If you need, I can put these convert program on the drupabible site.
B. Make bible module is able to import these XML-based bible. This need more days to work out.

I know there's no complete answers, but please let me know if I got the correct ways to go. Thanks.

MikeLee