Today I got an email which said the following about licensingthe NIV for use in the scripture program:
Non - Commercial
Non-commercial use is defined as the opposite of the definition of commercial use given above and generally means free provision of the medium in which the NIV, TNIV, and NIrV text is used. Most usage by local churches would fall into this category.
All non-commercial requests must be directed to and approved by:
International Bible Society
1820 Jet Stream Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80921-3969
I’m hopeful but it looks like the process with take some time.
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
0.2.7 was just released to the Market place. Besides all the other things this version is supposed to fix, it also has an update there to help with the more recent problems with the database downloads. We ran into some capacity problems with the previous version and we’re now on a new host. This is a much better solution and will allow us to grow as the number of users also increases.
FYI: It may take some time before the version on the market place acually changes to 0.2.7. Sometimes it’s a bit slow.
The following features will be added in the next versions, in order they are:
- Bookmarks
- Search
- Notes
- Highlighting/Underlining/”Marking”
- Refinement on “Import” tool, allowing people to either create their own versions or add additional books to their current database. This could include the apocrypha, to just name one. The tool will read OSIS initially and then include support for ThML.
The schedule/priorities can and will change based on user feedback.
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
This build fixes the navigation flick bug where you would change chapters when flicking while attempting to scroll instead.
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
There is a new
beta ready for download.
- Flick navigation impoved.
- Changes in orientation do not reset the chapter being viewed
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
To download using the program:
1. Start “Scriptures”
2. When the Invalid Database dialog appears, click the “Download” button.
3. Choose the scripture set you wish to download (either KJV Bible or LDS Scriptures)
4. Wait for the download to complete. The yellow progress bar will disapear when the download is complete. If you don’t wait for it to disapear, you will have a corrupted scripture set and will have to start the download again.
5. Click the ‘Done” button
6. Click the “Choose” button.
7. Click “Choose file…” button.
8. select the bible.db or the lds.db file under the /sdcard/scriptures/ directory.
9. Click ‘Ok”
Posted in Faith.
According to the Zondervan(the licensor of the NIV) website, permission must be obtained in order to quote the NIV in its entirity, which is what Scriptures would be doing. It also appears, accoring to the Fees section, that they charge a fee based on the comercial or non-comercial nature of the project as well as the amount of the text being used. Since the entirity would be quoted the fee would be the highest non-commercial fee they charge.
I also came across a couple threads on the GoBible forums which detail some of the licensing information they came up against when it came to licensing the NIV. Scriptures would also be in the same position as GoBible and $10,000.00 plus $10.00 per copy is just too much to justify the work that would go into distributing a NIV bible. When the import tool is complete if people wanted to make their own ThML version and import it themselves, they are welcome too, but the Scripture program will not link to or publish a NIV bible.
Having said that, I’ve made a formal inquiry to Zondervan to see if there have been any changes to their licensing since the GoBible request was made, but I’m not very hopeful. I’ll update this post when I hear back from them.
Posted in Announcements, programming.
The latest version of the android Scriptures application has the following improvements:
- Improved download capibilities/user feedback
- You can read scriptures in landscape mode without opening the keyboard.
This is a pre-release. If there are no problems with this version, it will be released to the market place on Monday.
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
This version is a continuation of the effort of trying to make the database download process easier. For people who are used to the old tethered version of the database install process, it was difficult for many users so the program was changed so it reads from an xml file that lists where the scriptures can be downloaded from. In the process the database structure was also changed, meaning that older versions of the database cannot be used with the newer programs. Many of the problems people are now experiencing are related to these two changes.
Version 0.2.5 was pointing at a small server and with the traffic that was hitting the server could not handle the requests and many people got the message that there were no scriptures to download. That issue has been resolved as the databases and xml file have been moved to a different server (now the only worry is if the bandwidth is exceeded).
Version 0.2.6 has a bug fix and an experimental feature: both related to chapter navigation. One was a bug fix and the other is flicking to move from chapter to chapter. Also the LDS scripture database was updated because D&C 77 only had the question parts of the verses and not the answers.
The tethered process and install instructions will still work, however the database must be one of the two updated databases which can be downloaded from the locations below. Once the database has been downloaded, select the ‘Choose’ option and in the preferences, navigate to the correct database (either bible.db or lds.db).
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
Big update with this one:
- Individual list item are larger so they are easier to select
- You can download direct from within the app. (It reads an XML file on scriptures.digitalbias.com, parses it and then shows the list base on it). This will allow for additional volumes, such as NIV, spanish, or extra works like sunday school manuals
- Fixed a bug in the file chooser
- Selection rows now take up the entire with of the screen
- You can change the font size of verses for easier reading
Posted in Announcements, Faith.
Post Android Market instructions
- Download either the LDS Standard Works or the KJV Holy Bible
- On the phone, go into settings -> sd card & phone storage, and make sure the “use for usb storage” option is checked.
- Attach you G1 to your computer
- copy the scriptures.db file to your sd card.
- Detach the G1 from the computer
- On the phone, go into settings -> sd card & phone storage, and uncheck the “use for usb storage”.
- Within the Scripture application open up the preferences and point the program at the location where you put the scriptures on the sd card. The file location should being with ‘/sdcard’
Posted in Announcements, Faith.