Scripture study tools

I'm new here, so please forgive me if this thread is redundant or misplaced.

On these forums, I have a found a smattering of ideas about improving members' options for using technology to study the scriptures. For many, "studying the scriptures" does not mean just reading or searching the text, it also denotes an exercise in personal annotation. Methods of annotation vary from person to person, but may include the use of color codes, cross-references, writing in scripture journals, or even the occasional, well-placed sticker.

I wonder if there is a plan for building personal annotation capabilities into scriptures.lds.org.

If no, I am curious if there is an LDS-tech-community interest in an open source project (possibly already in progress) that could be helpful in filling the void of study tools.

Supposing there are workarounds for some of the legal challenges with copyrights, I guess this thread is really about intentions and interest. I wonder what technology tools others would find (or have already found!) useful.

Some of the study tools that I would find most helpful are custom versions of the study aides already provided by the scriptures.

1) Personal Topical Guide: this would provide a way to group scriptures in a way that I see them. Of course, I want to choose both the topics and which scriptures reference it. This is similar to the topical color code systems that I have seen other people use.

2) Personal cross-references: an ability to cross-link verses.

3) Personal (Bible) Dictionary: scriptural terms and players take on layers of meanings. Therefore, it is desirable for words to be associated with personal definitions.

4) "Margin" Notes: Adding comments that I am now writing in the margins of my scriptures.

I whole-heartedly agree that this would be useful! Thank you, awayment, for posting the suggestions!

These are right in line with some of my own thoughts on where scripture study tools could be headed, if anyone were interested in pushing technological boundaries a bit, though I haven't seen anything that even attempts to do what you are outlining.

I'd expect that there would be a capability to collapse all of this personal supplemental material (so you can return to focusing on the scriptures in their purity). But a timestamped footnote with personal thoughts and crosslinks would be a wonderful supplement. How many overly-redlined copies of the Book of Mormon have we each gone through, marking a portion which sparked deep, spiritual thoughts (or conversations), only to have those insights lost by the wayside?

And why should the cross-linking be limited to the scriptures? Why not allow cross referencing other Conference talks? Quotes from other prominent media? Perhaps at some point, even allow access via a social networking type of site to share thoughts (perhaps across an institute class or a Sunday School or Priesthood lesson?).

If you search this site hard (and long) enough, you'll find a few threads devoted to starting new projects about scripture study, many with the same features you are looking for. However, I cannot think of a single project that has lasted very long, as I believe all have succumb to abandonment.

A project I joined but never did much with started out as a website that would show you the content from LDS.org and then allow you to annotate; however, because of copyright issues, the focus of the project turned to a desktop app that would download the scripture HTML and then go from there. The logic was that it was legal to download the scripture content for personal use, but it could not be redistributed nor stored on "computer networks" and I think it might have said something about web servers. So we decided that a desktop app was just merely facilitating the download of the scripture content on behalf of the user for personal use. However, this project has died because of inactivity and just being busy with other things I believe.

There certainly is a possibility a project like this could possibly happen as Church-sponsored, community-developed project; see the LDS Tech Wiki for more info on these new types of projects: http://tech.lds.org/wiki/

You might also find this thread interesting: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1865

RickParker wrote:I whole-heartedly agree that this would be useful! Thank you, awayment, for posting the suggestions!

These are right in line with some of my own thoughts on where scripture study tools could be headed, if anyone were interested in pushing technological boundaries a bit, though I haven't seen anything that even attempts to do what you are outlining.

I'd expect that there would be a capability to collapse all of this personal supplemental material (so you can return to focusing on the scriptures in their purity). But a timestamped footnote with personal thoughts and crosslinks would be a wonderful supplement. How many overly-redlined copies of the Book of Mormon have we each gone through, marking a portion which sparked deep, spiritual thoughts (or conversations), only to have those insights lost by the wayside?

And why should the cross-linking be limited to the scriptures? Why not allow cross referencing other Conference talks? Quotes from other prominent media? Perhaps at some point, even allow access via a social networking type of site to share thoughts (perhaps across an institute class or a Sunday School or Priesthood lesson?).

I am glad I am not the only one thinking along these lines! Yep it would be very cool to be able to link specific conference talks. Once, you have the ability to add personal hyperlinks (for cross-referencing), it should be easy to do. However, I think it unlikely that lds.org would allow linking to external sites.

mkmurray wrote:If you search this site hard (and long) enough, you'll find a few threads devoted to starting new projects about scripture study, many with the same features you are looking for. However, I cannot think of a single project that has lasted very long, as I believe all have succumb to abandonment.

A project I joined but never did much with started out as a website that would show you the content from LDS.org and then allow you to annotate; however, because of copyright issues, the focus of the project turned to a desktop app that would download the scripture HTML and then go from there. The logic was that it was legal to download the scripture content for personal use, but it could not be redistributed nor stored on "computer networks" and I think it might have said something about web servers. So we decided that a desktop app was just merely facilitating the download of the scripture content on behalf of the user for personal use. However, this project has died because of inactivity and just being busy with other things I believe.

There certainly is a possibility a project like this could possibly happen as Church-sponsored, community-developed project; see the LDS Tech Wiki for more info on these new types of projects: http://tech.lds.org/wiki/

You might also find this thread interesting: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1865

I see, so API legal limbo seems to make it hard to get/keep a web project going. That's a pity.

Searching the forum, I found readthescriptures.com, which seems to have some of the features I am looking for, but lacks many of the study aides, footnotes, etc. I assume the copyright issues keep it limited. As far as a stand alone desktop app., I also found this app, which is already produced by the Church. I am not too keen on reinventing the wheel, so I may check it out, and report back on how it fits my needs (I worry it is a bit dated, since there is no Mac or Vista version). Someone also mentioned using Google notebook, so I will try that as well.

If none of these work, I may try starting a new community project. Thanks for the link to the wiki!

awayment wrote:If none of these work, I may try starting a new community project.

Just to clear up something, I have not seen anyone start their own Community Project on the Church's wiki. I'm not sure what the policy is around this process of submitting Community Project ideas. The person to contact about an idea would be Tom Welch:

http://tech.lds.org/forum/member.php?u=1

However, if you're thinking about a Community Project not on the Church's wiki or hosted servers, then there's nothing stopping you. I would be sure to read up as much as you can about legal stuff on the Church's Scriptures site, just to make sure that whatever you do is inline with policy.

To enable such a project, what is first needed is a Scriptures API where an application can call into scriptures.lds.org via a web service and return back the scriptures with all footnotes, links, etc. This web service has been proposed by the scriptures team. Assuming all approvals are cleared, we could provide this service early next year. It may not get approved so please don't hold me to it.

Tom

Oh I hope it gets approved. If it doesn't...I desperately want to see markup/annotating capabilities at scriptures.lds.org. What is mentioned on this thread sounds great, but even simple text markup (underline, text color change, highlight) and annotations that persist for each user would be wonderful.

awayment wrote: I also found this app, which is already produced by the Church. I am not too keen on reinventing the wheel, so I may check it out, and report back on how it fits my needs (I worry it is a bit dated, since there is no Mac or Vista version).

The desktop version is really nice in many ways, but it lacks any kind of sophistication in markups. You can only highlight text in a really garish,ugly, blocky way. If you could change text color, highlight, and underline all independently, I think this app would be a lot more viable. The note system also uses some wacky note file format (.enb), xml would be much better. A Mac version is badly needed too.

-jrmy

I have started such a project at http://www.dearscriptures.com
I am currently working on a better design with some new features subscribers have requested.
I hope to have the new version live soon (couple of weeks).
Some of the new features are:
- ability to underline and highlight part of a verse.
- context menu for access to verse options.
- dictionary lookup

I have now updated the site with all of the stated features and a few more. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.

http://www.dearscriptures.com

Steve

slloyd wrote:I have started such a project at http://www.dearscriptures.com
I am currently working on a better design with some new features subscribers have requested.
I hope to have the new version live soon (couple of weeks).
Some of the new features are:
- ability to underline and highlight part of a verse.
- context menu for access to verse options.
- dictionary lookup

Hi, I ended up on this forum because my dad recently asked me to install on his computer a software so he can study the Scriptures, but I couldn't find anything much useful, open source, that I could install. He had installed "LDS Scriptures CD-ROM Resource Edition", but when Vista couldn't connect to his secure wireless network any longer, I installed Ubuntu so he wouldn't have to pay another $200 for a new Operating System... to make a story short, he doesn't know where he got that software and the only place I could find is on some site asking for my unitId and a password, and we tried several times to connect without any success. Also, PAF 5 works fine on Linux using Wine, but he had bought some other software back when Windows 98 was still hot (Gospel Link) and his version can no longer be installed anywhere.

The questions are now: 1) what technologies are being used to develop open source projects on desktop applications that are multiplatform, other than Java, that you are using? I would certainly join an open source project and I would like to know what other people use to develop their project. 2) Why are web projects the main focus on such projects? Of course the appeal of having your studies information at hand on the web is great, but what about when one is not able to connect online to do his study? I'm simply curious about what others thing on this.

I am also a bit concerned about group studies and shared Scriptures commentaries; while being able to read other people's thoughts on a specific verse is nice, but without a moderator, what is being commented can easily get out of hand (especially on open projects and who would be the moderator? Unless to post a comment one must login using lds.org profile credentials... which is unlikely to happen... this feature should be at least limited to be shared with (allow only specific users to view your commentaries, and create users study groups), but then again, this could also mean allowing unsupervised comments to be shared and viewed online. There's a reason why the Church has not yet implemented highlights and user comments on the Scriptures and I believe that they go along these lines.

Other concerns about such an open project are the books available to download/link to the personal library. I was reading that scriptures.lds.org could have an API for downloading the Scriptures with footnotes and all, and while this is great, lds.org cannot provide all the books for an open project, and the software, or web application, should provide ways to import, or even buy, other eBooks. For example, the french Bible cannot be on lds.org because of copyright issues, but can be downloaded for free on many web sites. The problem is that these sites do not have footnotes formatted the same way scriptures.lds.org has. There are other legal issues involved with publishing the Scriptures online, but not on desktop applications. How to cope with this?

There are many projects out there that look good (DAVAR3 for instance) but do not seem to support other books, or do not seem to be platform independant. I would be interested to open a project on Google Code/Assambla, or Github, etc. Personally, I am more inclined to like desktop applications with online connection capabilities than a web application for this kind of project.

Follow this thread for more details on this : http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3474

yanick wrote:"LDS Scriptures CD-ROM Resource Edition", . . .
he doesn't know where he got that software and the only place I could find is on some site asking for my unitId and a password, and we tried several times to connect without any success.

He probably got the CD for $6 from LDS Distribution Services. When it first came out, wards were encouraged to consolidate orders for members. He may have received it that way, rather than through his own distribution center order. Does it not run under Wine?

The site you found is a location where the stake technology specialist can obtain the software to load it on unit administrative computers. It is authorized software for the clerks computers.

lajackson wrote:He probably got the CD for $6 from LDS Distribution Services. When it first came out, wards were encouraged to consolidate orders for members. He may have received it that way, rather than through his own distribution center order. Does it not run under Wine?

That's the thing, since he can't remember where he got it from, he doesn't have the CD-ROM. He probably got it installed by somebody who didn't gave him a copy of the CD (does this software authorize copies? I mean, for $6, it's merely for the packaging and shipping, is it not?) So I have absolutely no idea if it runs well on Wine. The only links I can find are

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=3115

and

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=4680

While the last one should run ok, the first one seems to be garbage. I would have to try and test it out... if I ever get a hand on a copy of "LDS Scriptures CD-ROM Resource Edition".

But this does not solve the issue of having french Scriptures loaded into the software. I haven't tried it and, well, haven't read any documentation yet about it, but can it actually display other Scriptures language than english?

That's why I'm all for having an open source project about this (multi platform) and have user contributing more books and articles. Perhaps even have GC and CES talks, and all (if all of these are subject to the same copyrights)

lajackson wrote:The site you found is a location where the stake technology specialist can obtain the software to load it on unit administrative computers. It is authorized software for the clerks computers.

Good to know. Thank you for the information. This should be noted on the site though. It kind of doesn't tell.

yanick wrote:That's the thing, since he can't remember where he got it from, he doesn't have the CD-ROM. He probably got it installed by somebody who didn't gave him a copy of the CD (does this software authorize copies?)

No, it is copyrighted.

yanick wrote:I mean, for $6, it's merely for the packaging and shipping, is it not?

The Church provides it at cost to members. That is why it is so cheap. You will pay shipping and handling in addition to the item cost. The CD is available at the Distribution Center online site. It is item 50315000.

yanick wrote:But this does not solve the issue of having french Scriptures loaded into the software. I haven't tried it and, well, haven't read any documentation yet about it, but can it actually display other Scriptures language than english?

Yes, and French is one of the languages. I am not at home to look, but I know French and Spanish are available, and I think Italian, German and Hebrew. I think there are about six or eight languages total.

The languages can be displayed independently, or a language can be chosen and displayed side by side with English.

I have not updated this thread for a while although there have been several improvements to the DearScriptures.com service.

1. Built a mobile site for use on cellphones and PDAs that have access to the internet. The url is http://m.dearscriptures.com. It has the following features:
   1. Search for scriptures that contain a word or phrase or lookup by reference
   2. Search for hymns that contain a word or phrase or lookup by hymn number
   3. Search for primary songs that contain a word or phrase or lookup by number.
   4. Search multiple online dictionaries for the definition of a word or phrase. This searches the LDS Bible Dictionary plus several other public sources. All scripture references returned are linked to that scripture.
2. Built a WordPress plugin that links scripture references in your blog posts and comments so that the scripture shows up in a popup div when you mouse over the reference. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lds-scripture-linker/This plugin can be configured so the each verse is linked to scriptures.lds.org. The plugin has been downloaded over 200 times this year so far and is being use by LDS blogs including
   1. http://www.templestudy.com
   2. http://www.heavenlyascents.com

Well, That is it for now. There are currently almost 500 people that have registered for dearscriptures.com Many more use the mobile site since it does not require a login. I would love to hear suggestions on how to grow the membership to the thousands

Steven Lloyd

Stephen,

We are trying out the DearScriptures.com site, and we have some questions. Where can we contact you?

Tom