STEP using Crosswire

>>It is exciting to see people coming together to make this happen.
>>Chris, thank you for reviewing the offerings at CrossWire in
>>consideration for this project.
>>
>>Let me start by saying the obvious: I'm biased. So, In this email
>>I'll only recommend what I think should be ultimately done with
>>STEP. I'm more than happy to help with info and anything else we
>>can offer, even if decisions are made otherwise. But here are my
>>obviously biased opinions.
>>
>>I think STEP should start with the CD CrossWire already offers for
>>free download which contains all of our materials.
>>
>>ftp://ftp.crosswire.org/pub/sword/iso
>>
>>This CD needs alot of work. First, the last cut is from 6/2008 and
>>quite a lot of progress has been made here over the past year.
>>
>>Second, the CD needs some congruency. It currently just has
>>everything we do here at CrossWire thrown onto a CD. It would be
>>nice to just "do the right thing" when placed into a Mac, or
>>Windows, or Linux box. It currently takes some browsing and
>>reading of "README" files if, for example, you'd like to install
>>our software on a Mac.
>>
>>Third, "the right thing" might be different for STEP than for
>>CrossWire. At CrossWire we offer software which runs on PDAs,
>>Mobile Phones, and Web Servers, as well as the standard desktop systems.
>>
>>Let me list some of the advantages to using CrossWire tools:
>>
>>We have a common cross-platform C++ binary engine which is at the
>>heart of all of our tools.
>>
>>This engine works the same on all platforms,
>>uses the same library of materials,
>>has a remote book installer which allows many organizations to
>>publish materials which will be 'auto-discovered' by any of our software,
>>solves the difficult if not subtle problems of Biblical software
>>development like,
>>verse reference parsing which can parse most anything you can throw
>>at it in 38 different languages,
>>dynamic versification schemes (sadly Bibles around the world and
>>many English Bibles do not use the same versification scheme),
>>ability to research against or simply show/hide features in
>>Biblical text like: word lemmas and morphology (e.g. strongs,
>>hebrew morphemes, etc.), footnotes, cross-references, section
>>headings, words of Christ, etc.,
>>fully Unicode compliant and internationalized for easy translation
>>into new languages and supports toggling (for display or search) of
>>various language/writing specific features like: Hebrew
>>Cantillation, Hebrew Vowel Points, Greek Diacritics, Arabic Vowel
>>Points, Arabic Shaping, Papyri Annotation, Manuscript Variants, etc.
>>
>>We have many programming language bindings to the engine which
>>allows developers of differing skills to be comfortable in their
>>preferred language: native C++, Python, Perl, Java, most any
>>language SWIG supports.
>>
>>Native frontends have already been written and provide a base to
>>start. Bibletime and Xiphos are frontends which both run on all
>>three major platforms: Linux, MacOSX, and Windows.
>>
>>There are multiple web-based frontends already developed and in
>>use, including SWORDWeb and a really cool firefox plugin done by a
>>nameless developer in Russia, for which I can't remember the name
>>of his software either, but it's cool and looks nice.
>>
>>Anyway, we've had 20+ years of experience developing software for
>>Bible study. I think we have a good base to offer, and I selfishly
>>want the STEP project to add one more frontend to cover what you
>>feel is missing in the free Bible software development world. I'm
>>sure your contributions will benefit our large community of
>>developers and users, and we'd like to share in work together with
>>you. I'm sure you have much to teach us.
>>
>>My suggestion would be to post your agenda on our developers' forum
>>and see what ideas you get and who else is excited about your work.
>>
>>http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>>
>>There is always a learning curve to pay when choosing to start with
>>another codebase, but hopefully that curve is shorter than starting
>>from scratch, and also you get the warm and fuzzy feeling of
>>contributing back to our work, as well! :)
>>
>>Anyway, this is long and probably enough for now.
>>
>> -Troy.