Real Bible View

[dandennison]

I've wanted this is a Bible program for a long long time.

 

Give us a UI that looks like a Bible you would hold in your hand.

 

You could have a Quentel layout, Clarendon layout, Canterbury layout, etc.

 

Add support for illuminated manuscript view. Illustrated drop-caps, etc.

 

Anyone else wish for this?

[Tim Hall]

I suppose it would be kinda cool, but I am not sure what the point would be.

[Alistair]

You forgot to mention the ability to see the reversed text come through from the other side of the page.

[Michael Hunt]

In the early days of mobile app development, programmers would code software to mimic the features of their real-life counterparts. For example, Apple's implementation of the notes app for a long time looked just like a legal notepad right down to the double margin lines and yellow colour.

 

 

This design philosophy is known as skeuomorphism but has in recent years been ditched by both Apple and Google for a flat (or material in the case of Google) design.

 

For a while, bible app developers followed this philosophy of skeuomorphism such as this older example of a competitors app (HT: abramkj –– I dug this up from a blog post when doing a google image search) 

 

 

But know like many other app developers they also have moved to flat design.

 

I would say that it is unlikely that developers will return to creating apps using skeuomorphism (particularly in the already established field of Bible software) but as the following article shows skeuomorphism isn't quite dead yet.

 

Skeuomorphism is dead, long live skeuomorphism

 

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/skeuomorphism-is-dead-long-live-skeuomorphism

 

P.S. Thanks go to the forum host for recent updates to the forum software (I believe that is what the recent outages a few days ago were about). Pasting images directly into posts know saves so much time.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Michael Hunt

[Michel Gilbert]

There could be many personal and/or professional reasons for wanting a certain skeuomorphisized version.

 

A few years ago I posted, " I've always wanted a version of BHS that looked like a facsimile, but had all the features of an electronic edition so that you could hover over the text, the Masorah, or the apparatus, and a pop-up, sort of like Instant Details, would give the tagging information, full Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, etc., with an English explanation/translation."

 

Part of the reason is just familiarity, like when we read our Bibles growing up and didn't know the verse number necessarily, but we knew it was at the top left of page whatever.

[Michael Hunt]

There could be many personal and/or professional reasons for wanting a certain skeuomorphisized version.

 

A few years ago I posted, " I've always wanted a version of BHS that looked like a facsimile, but had all the features of an electronic edition so that you could hover over the text, the Masorah, or the apparatus, and a pop-up, sort of like Instant Details, would give the tagging information, full Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, etc., with an English explanation/translation."

 

Part of the reason is just familiarity, like when we read our Bibles growing up and didn't know the verse number necessarily, but we knew it was at the top left of page whatever.

 

For sure. And your last sentence really strikes at the heart of skeuomorphism. Interestingly my digital native daughters are more apt to remember where the app icon for any one of their favourite programs is buried than they are about where to find a particular verse reference.

[Alistair]

Part of the reason is just familiarity, like when we read our Bibles growing up and didn't know the verse number necessarily, but we knew it was at the top left of page whatever.

Absolutely correct. Until you get a new Bible, that is.

[Michel Gilbert]

In this case, a new BHS would look exactly the same as the old one. I've been reading one for three and a half decades, the same number of years that I've been married. Getting a new Bible to replace BHS is about as likely as getting a new wife.

 

Accordance sells the manuscript that BHS transcribes. I'm sure that if they offered a facsimile of BHS they would sell more copies of it than the manuscript. It is read and used in classrooms a lot more than the manuscript is.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Michel Gilbert

[dandennison]

I still object to the transition to flat. Apple had it right with skeuomorphism and they made iOS ugly by moving away from it.

 

In any case, this clearly would be a UI toggle. I would find it very desirable particularly on the mobile version. If I bought a book, I want it to look like a book. There is a reason the eye-candy is such in books. Your brain needs more to look at than pure words on a page.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

I love books and in other threads I've noted such. I still build book shelves - well, I have the wood cut awaiting jointing but that's another story.

 

But computers don't smell like books - my copy of BDF is lovely for that among other physical book reasons. But when we buy a book in a computer we don't really buy a book. We make a few concessions to the likeness of books, mostly in line with function, readability and such. In other cases a few more elaborations for support of facsimiles for study of various details. Much is made of page turning support for example, which I personally like but could live without - in fact the desktop Accordance app doesn't have it. But honestly, in the end if I want a book, I'll buy a book. I did that with a Greek copy of the gospels actually. At some point one has to draw the line and say that this thing is not a book - it's a new thing containing writing¹ - not even that - it's a new thing containing text. But, this new thing that we have has these wonderful advantages; searching, copy and paste, light weight and so on. It's not a book but it is very useful and with one or two simple tweaks it looks ok, "not as good as I thought, but good" to slightly misquote². Is that enough for me to want to switch to this form of text or not ? It depends ...

 

I wonder if the same sorts of concerns arose when the switch from scoll to codex came about ? Did people long for the rollers and so on that the scroll used ? But then they said this is not a scroll, I can carry it about more easily, I can open it flat, and flip to a different page much more easily than a scroll and so on.

 

It will only be so far that computer software will go in faking it, and given the other calls on development resources that won't be far enough for some, and will be seen as excessive by others. Perhaps some will go as far as you ask for but some of those things are only done in book production systems, using the computer to produce a different output.

 

Others have commented elsewhere how the webpage now begins to feel like a return to the scroll. Others say I want page turning though even that might well die out as the page is more or less meaningless to a computer. The screen full is highly non-standard but a more natural unit.

 

So, while I agree that some likeness to a book is desirable, there are other things I need more in these tools than imitation.

 

Michel's point above is interesting. "If I could have all of what I had and then all the new features that would be cool" - it would. The tech alas, doesn't work that way. It still won't feel like a book - it won't be as heavy, it won't smell right, it won't sound right when you turn the pages ... it is a new thing. Perhaps we will come to love it so much as we do our paper volumes and a century from now we will long for the scrolling tablet when even they are passing out of use, or become a mere memory. Perhaps not ...

 

I have gone on too long ....

 

-----------------

 

1  Interestingly we think of it as writing but it's not written. Many books these days are not books, and are not written, they are encoded in percussion, the striking of keys, not the smooth flow of the pen or scratch of the stylus. We don't form the letters, we stamp them out.

 

2. Francesco Bernoulli to Lightning McQueen in Cars 2.

 

Thx

D

[Unix]

Heaviness pertaining to holding the book when reading: Well like I've said elsewhere I'm not buying a tablet for nine Years. I have access to AYBD on a 2011 BlackBerry tablet and the NABRE and the older Edition of some people's favourite Swedish Bible (so that Edition is no-longer in use), so between my main laptop which is fairly thin and a couple of tomes I'd say it is equally cumbersome in the bus seat in the commuter traffic together with juggling my Confraternity NT or some leather Bible.

Like R. Mansfield said in the great blog-post in 2014 which both he has and I have recently linked to, "I love the smell of new Accordance books".

I have a selective smell for almost all things and memory. I don't remember the print book smells all that distinctly this time of the Year actually, since the smells of gravel that was used to fight slippery roads and walking paths during the Winter as well as all other smells and scents that come through when it is somewhat dry and a bit chilly outdoors (like it is most of the Year) take over and push away other experiences.

Also at other times the perfumes in the local shopping Malls (Mall of Scandinavia for one)

and fruit, vegetables and berries being harbested take over. In fact, the wonderful smell of my Accordance books consists of the memory from the places where I downloaded them, since I go back often - not for downloading but for othet comfortable uses or since it is the kind of places where I have to spend much of my time -

the public library with fairly good opening hours, the buses, my parent's living room, the computer workshop (the one which will eventually cease to exist), the smell of those places sticks in my memory as the smell of my new Accordance books. The smell of the ones I've had for a while is that of my private library with its old fashioned furniture, mixed pleasant scent of not too fingered print books (I actually grow tired of the smell in some libraries of tens of thousands of fingers that have read the books, it's a TOO mixed scent) and old loose green carpets I've inherited from my childhood home, and the spice I scent my books with a little.

 

I would be FOR a facsimile of BHS so that Michel and others can have it under Accordance!

 

Oh, we do really buy a book! We buy a relationship. The possibility to be liked by another academic person of the opposite sex since we are strategical in not becoming completely "immovable" as Accordance books go with us in bulk AND boot fast and are in use for several hours without re-charge on top of all communication and errands to be done on the laptop.

I'm about to cram three additional, two of them already big sets of books into my living room.

I have to start re-organising. Commentaries, Talmud and Brill books are types needing more space, so I have to face putting most books in local language and the more rarely used dictionaries and the books about "Gnosticism"

and other religions and the rarely used Bibles and the very few books that question the existence of God and the grammars I don't use every day right now and the easier books and thin commentaries, all of those in somehow fashionable wooden boxes in top of the bookcases. Plus I have to take the furniture above my desk in use for books that are in use that Week. So I don't mind the relief I know comes with having books under Accordance instead! I haven't built bookshelves but have had to repair twice thus far because of the weight. Luckily over here small spare parts for mosy furnitures are free to just fetch.

 

But yeah I agree there are a lot of requests for features and functionality to be programmed and most users seem committed to the platform so the development priorities CAN be given different weights but it IS at the same time necessary to be predictive and to be the leading platform of choice so many of the things that are or are put in(to) development need to attract more new users as well as make the existing ones exult and fall all the more deeply in love with spending on here on their passions and/or on the vast possibilities of what can be had under one's fingertips which brings depth to exploration and sophistication:

I love books and in other threads I've noted such. I still build book shelves - well, I have the wood cut awaiting jointing but that's another story.

 

But computers don't smell like books. [...] But when we buy a book in a computer we don't really buy a book. But honestly, in the end if I want a book, I'll buy a book.

 

It will only be so far that computer software will go in faking it, and given the other calls on development resources that won't be far enough for some, and will be seen as excessive by others. Perhaps some will go as far as you ask for but some of those things are only done in book production systems, using the computer to produce a different output.

 

Others have commented elsewhere how the webpage now begins to feel like a return to the scroll. Others say I want page turning though even that might well die out as the page is more or less meaningless to a computer. The screen full is highly non-standard but a more natural unit.

 

So, while I agree that some likeness to a book is desirable, there are other things I need more in these tools than imitation.

 

Michel's point above is interesting. "If I could have all of what I had and then all the new features that would be cool" - it would. The tech alas, doesn't work that way. It still won't feel like a book - it won't be as heavy, it won't smell right, it won't sound right when you turn the pages ... it is a new thing. Perhaps we will come to love it so much as we do our paper volumes