Tech Forum

Is there any potential for a scripture API for third party applications? Something the Mormon Documentation Project where developers can innovate using Church-sponsored material.

For example, MDP was used by Stewart Foss to create ScriptureTag.

I'd love to see something integrated along the lines of BYU's project to link together General Conference addresses, but also have options to correlate other content from approved third party developers.

As one example, I'd love to be able to cross-reference the Jesus the Christ concordance I created, along with other Church-approved literature for easy research.

This could be something similar to the layering function in Google Earth, where with a basic data display (the map), you can display additional layers at your discretion (e.g. Google Earth Community, National Geographic, Wikimapia, etc.)

We are looking into providing some scripture API's to the online scripture reference. I like your analogy of the Google Earth experience. I think that would be very cool!

Tom

I have some ideas for scripture study journal software that could probably integrate well with the API's, but it is too long to post here. How to I share my idea?

Following up on my previous suggestions, I think it'd also be sweet to harness the various languages the online scriptures are in and allow side-by-side perusal such as is done at ScriptureText. This would be a good experiment for people trying to learn new languages by using the word of God, similar to the intentions of Bookslinger, or John Groberg's experience in Tonga.

I'd say start the discussions here by giving an overview of what you are thinking and let people start to ask questions.

Tom

I like the side-by-side languages idea, and not just English/Spanish, but like German/French too. That way, not only could one learn the language, but missionaries that know they are going to learn a language other than their own, and not just from English to whatever, can actually familiarize themselves wth what is in the Triple.

With the Church growing in languages other than English, and the distinct possibility that we will have missionaries learning languages other than English that speak natively languages other than English, this could prove invaluable to them.

A scriptures-based API is a splendid idea. Thumbs up.

tebbs wrote:I have some ideas for scripture study journal software that could probably integrate well with the API's, but it is too long to post here. How to I share my idea?

Because my thoughts are so long I put them over in the ideas and suggestions section under Software Study Journal. I'd think that something could be developed so that the online scripture could interacte with someone's study journal software to display their comments/cross references and maybe display other people's comments too. That's a great idea you have with the scripture API.

Love it! With API's the possibilities are endless.

Could someone define API for me. I guess I have an idea of what it is by visiting the website references left by cboyack. However, I would like to know what it stands for exactly. Thank you.