Palm Pre....Any software developed for Web OS?

I just bought the new Palm Pre and one of the first things I looked for was a reader for the Scriptures. I could run the emulator and download and install reader for older Palm OS but I was hoping that something would be available for the new WebOS. I am hoping to find someone on here that is more knowledgeable than me and help me come up with a solution to view and mark my scriptures on Sprint's Palm Pre WebOS.

I am there with you man.

But with only 100,000 phones sold I am sure it hasn't become a priority yet for reader developers. The Church doesn't develop the ereader software. But Mobipocket says they are working on Javabased phones and already has a download ready. The Pre has a lot of Java in it, but can't run the program.

So it will come soon. But the Pre is so fast, I have been just logging on the church website and using that for now.

BenJoe

BenJoeM wrote:I am there with you man.

But with only 100,000 phones sold I am sure it hasn't become a priority yet for reader developers. The Church doesn't develop the ereader software. But Mobipocket says they are working on Javabased phones and already has a download ready. The Pre has a lot of Java in it, but can't run the program.

So it will come soon. But the Pre is so fast, I have been just logging on the church website and using that for now.

BenJoe

Been doing the same with logging onto lds.org and just going to their Gospel Library. If anyone hears of anything better please keep me informed.

You probably know this already but most old palm applications will still run inside of the classic application. I'm using MarkMyScriptures until something better designed for the Web OS comes along.

I hope this thread isn't too old to revive. Please let me know if it is. I also just got a Pre. A couple of questions:

cbruns, iirc, the MarkMyScriptures app is tied to the user's Hotsync ID if you use the registered version. Did that present any problems, or does Classic allow you to specify an arbitrary ID?

Also, has anyone tried out the Gospelink offerings? If they have a mobile site, optimized for the iPhone, there's a good chance that the Pre will be perfectly happy with it as well. In fact, I've been slowly exploring the thousands of pages/apps that were made back when Apple wasn't sure they were going to have an SDK and were just telling people to create well-formatted web apps.

I'd really like to move to electronic scriptures and study materials. The only possible problems are 1) I really like books... it's just a tactile preference and 2) imagining the folks at church muttering, "well, look at treesloth, texting and surfing the internet during sacrament meeting. Kids, don't talk to him." :p

treesloth wrote:The only possible problems are 1) I really like books... it's just a tactile preference and 2) imagining the folks at church muttering, "well, look at treesloth, texting and surfing the internet during sacrament meeting. Kids, don't talk to him." :p

Scriptures on PDAs have been around since at least the Palm IIIxe days. As long as you participate in class, they'll figure out what you are reading. My ward avoids me, but it's not for that reason.

treesloth wrote:I'd really like to move to electronic scriptures and study materials. The only possible problems are 1) I really like books... it's just a tactile preference and 2) imagining the folks at church muttering, "well, look at treesloth, texting and surfing the internet during sacrament meeting. Kids, don't talk to him." :p

At a stake priesthood leadership meeting I attended in conjunction with stake conference a few years ago, an apostle said, "Get out your laptops, PDAs, readers, or whatever else you are using and let's go to work."

He cracked open his own set of scriptures (traditional paper), and we were off and running. It was a great meeting.

RussellHltn wrote:Scriptures on PDAs have been around since at least the Palm IIIxe days. As long as you participate in class, they'll figure out what you are reading. My ward avoids me, but it's not for that reason.

I think I had them on that very PDA. Then I upgraded to the IIIc... that's right... color, baby! I tried using a rather small tablet PC, but noticed that was distracting the people around me.

lajackson wrote:At a stake priesthood leadership meeting I attended in conjunction with stake conference a few years ago, an apostle said, "Get out your laptops, PDAs, readers, or whatever else you are using and let's go to work."

He cracked open his own set of scriptures (traditional paper), and we were off and running. It was a great meeting.

It always surprises me how media- and technology-astute the Twelve and the First Presidency are. I'm not saying that Pres. Monson writes Perl code when he's bored (or maybe he does... what do I know?) but they do have an extremely up-to-date understanding of the personal effects of technology.

treesloth wrote:I think I had them on that very PDA. Then I upgraded to the IIIc... that's right... color, baby!

And then there's that one scene at the end of The Singles Ward. That came out 7 years ago. So PDAs in Mormon culture is old school now.

treesloth wrote:I tried using a rather small tablet PC, but noticed that was distracting the people around me.

Trying to read what's on your screen?

RussellHltn wrote:Trying to read what's on your screen?

Not sure... seemed more like a combination of, "hey, tiny laptop!" and "what's that guy doing"? One girl even said, "Oh, it's so CUTE!!!" and started petting it. Humiliating...

Not that this is any endrosement of PDA's but Elder Scott was the first one to show me the scriptures on a PDA during a priesthood leadership meeting back in 1999.


Anyways, I got mobipocket working on the Classic App and was able to bring over all my older scripture files. So far it is a little cramped since I am using the Classic App.

As for Hotsync ID classic app does let you set you Hotsync ID so if you purchased Markmyscriptures then you can still use the registered version.

I did talked to some Iphone developers and they said once the SDK comes out for the Pre Iphone apps should convert over nicely and we will see them quickly.

I just downloaded Softcover App for the palm pre. They have tons of free books that you can download and read. Looked for both the Book of Mormon and King James version of the Bible and couldn't find them. Would be nice if we were able to use Softcover some way to distribute LDS literature. You would think that all the traffic directed through their site to get to the Free LDS stuff would generate some sales.

ryebread wrote:I just downloaded Softcover App for the palm pre. They have tons of free books that you can download and read. Looked for both the Book of Mormon and King James version of the Bible and couldn't find them. Would be nice if we were able to use Softcover some way to distribute LDS literature. You would think that all the traffic directed through their site to get to the Free LDS stuff would generate some sales.

SoftCover? Where did you find this app? I'd love to get the scriptures on my Pre. So much so, I'm developing my own app for it.

edit... So perhaps you mean shortcovers. Its exaclty what it says, short stories... Not good for anything more than a chapter at a time.

wstillwell wrote:SoftCover? Where did you find this app? I'd love to get the scriptures on my Pre. So much so, I'm developing my own app for it.

edit... So perhaps you mean shortcovers. Its exaclty what it says, short stories... Not good for anything more than a chapter at a time.

Any luck with this app? I'm looking at getting a Palm Pre but I really want to be able to use scriptures, priesthood manual, the Mormon channel, and Wardtools on it. Do you all know of any apps that might help with these?

Here's a guy that's working on a "homebrew" app installed through the side loader. I haven't installed it yet, but my brother has and says it's pretty decent.

http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps ... scriptures

This looks great

grasshoppa wrote:Here's a guy that's working on a "homebrew" app installed through the side loader. I haven't installed it yet, but my brother has and says it's pretty decent.

http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps ... scriptures

That's great...now someone needs to come up with a way to listen to the Mormon channel on the Pre and I'd be set!!

Ok installed the new Homebrew App for Daily Scriptures. This was is great! The Hymns lets you push a button and it will stream the hymn to your pre so you can listen to it. Plus it has all the standard works. Great program. Needs some more updates but it is 100 times faster than Mobipocket.


Also if you do have the old Mobipocket files for the Palm it will work on the Kindle, which is nice too.

http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps ... scriptures

Simple LDS Scriptures is a program I have been working with a couple of guys that have been writing an Open Source Bible reader, and modifying it to have all the LDS scriptures.

This isn't as refined as Daily Scriptures, but it has the advantage that it is Open Source, where Daily Scriptures is intended to become a paid program.

Any help or advice on it would be appreciated.

treesloth wrote: I'd really like to move to electronic scriptures and study materials. The only possible problems are 1) I really like books... it's just a tactile preference and 2) imagining the folks at church muttering, "well, look at treesloth, texting and surfing the internet during sacrament meeting. Kids, don't talk to him." :p

I understand the comment about sometimes just liking a book. I love having the scriptures and other materials on my belt to read on a train or have handy in any meeting. But if I know I will have to supply a spiritual thought or give a talk, I still bring my real scriptures, as it is easier to find things in a hurry and I haven't found a reader with marking features that I like yet.

Has anyone else noticed the links to several of the readers on the church website are broken. How does one report this? Isilo for both palm and windows mobile and MS reader have broken external links. I recently bought a new phone. I'm a windows mobile HTC person myself, but my wife uses a palm so I have an interest in both systems and would usually update both at the same time. I went online to download the latest versions of the readers to try them out and couldn't. If I didn't have backups of the previous versions I would have been completely stuck on some of those programs, at least for a while. It seems not very useful having the latest materials available for download if the readers to open them are not available. Not really my problem, but I'd like to report it and get it fixed if I can as less tech savvy people might easily give up on installing scriptures on their pda if the program downloads become too difficult to find.

The broken links have been reported. Thanks for pointing them out.

I've been using ldg.org but the dead spots in the building make things difficult.

Any update on the scriptures (as well as other church literature) coming out for the Palm Pre?

Is there an expected date?

scubapilot2000 wrote:Any update on the scriptures (as well as other church literature) coming out for the Palm Pre?

Is there an expected date?

You can see the progress being made on the wiki page Mobile Scriptures Palm Pre. However, no target dates are listed there.

Until the current WebOS app in development is completed, a free ereader program is available called preader. I have done some extensive searching and have not been able to locate the scriptures in ereader format. A couple webpages come up in my search, but the websites do not respond.
Does anyone know where I can get my hands on ereader formatted scriptures?
Thanks!

Any updates on the expected release. I checked the wiki but no timeframes are given.

scubapilot2000 wrote:Any updates on the expected release. I checked the wiki but no timeframes are given.

If you want to ask about a release date, your best bet would be to ask on the wiki. The team working on that project may not be monitoring the forum. So I would suggest that you pose your question on the project's talk page.

for some reason the wiki won't let me login to post. If someone can ask for a date that would be great.

The wiki uses the same login as LUWS. It is different then the forum.

Anyone know what the status/update is on the WebOS Scripture Reader? The wiki site hasn't provided any status updates in a few months from the developers and I'm not sure if this project has been put on hold. For what it's worth, the video provided has illustrated quite a nice overview of the scripture app. I'm hoping it will become available in the app catalog. While the SVN is available, I'm just not quite ready yet to install homebrew on my Pre and would like to see this officially supported.

I've made mention of it on the discussion tab for the wiki, but I'll post it here as well. Palm has just enabled the ability to distribute beta apps privately, so beta users who are willing to test this can do so in a much easier fashion. You can fine more details here:

developer.palm.com/blog/2010/02

Looking forward to hearing more about this app.

I'm with you glos, I'm one of the many webos users out there waiting. If I could get WebOS scriptures and Ward Tools, I'd be a happy man. Ward Tools lost steam once it was made free.

If anyone out there needs a beta tester, I'd love to help in anyway.

I don't know if anyone is even watching these threads or not, but I left a comment in the discussion area for the Palm Pre (WebOS) Scripture App. I'm posting it here as well in case no one saw it. (I don't have an account for the dev bug tracker but have recently requested access)

There is a section in the content/eng/scriptures/nt/03990_000_nt_000.json file which does not belong there. When you open the New Testament, it displays chapter "b" right after Matthew. To resolve this, before compiling, modify the file and remove just that section, leaving all other formatting in place.

UPDATE: Many sections in this latest build (671) are empty. I have noticed the following incomplete json files:

- Old Testament
- Topical Guide
- Bible Dictionary

I actually went in myself and populated the fields, which I'm glad I did because now I can see how much easier it will be to add books in the future.

Not sure where we report bugs, but:

Matt 1:5 and Luke 3:32 list "Booz" as the ancestor of Christ, not Boaz.

Makes me wonder about the word of wisdom.

tortdog wrote:Not sure where we report bugs, but:

Matt 1:5 and Luke 3:32 list "Booz" as the ancestor of Christ, not Boaz.

Makes me wonder about the word of wisdom.

Those aren't bugs; look in the printed version and you'll see the same spelling: Boaz (OT) is spelled as Booz in the NT. In many cases, NT spellings are different from OT spellings (Hebrew vs. Aramaic/Greek). In those same genealogies, note that Judah (OT) is listed as Judas/Juda; Methuselah (OT) is listed as Mathusala; Rehoboam (OT) is listed as Roboam; etc.

Well there ya go. You are correct that the KJV has it wrong. When do we switch to the NAB???

tortdog wrote:Well there ya go. You are correct that the KJV has it wrong. When do we switch to the NAB???

I never said that "the KJV has it wrong." I simply explained that names in the Old and New Testaments are often spelled differently because of different language origins. The King James Version remains the Church's official version of the Bible for the English language. I sincerely doubt that this will change.

It would be interesting to check the JST, but I doubt it would be different than the KJV.