LDS Scriptures for the Amazon Kindle

Ethem
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LDS Scriptures for the Amazon Kindle

#1

Post by Ethem »

I have looked at the Mobile Scriptures project on the LDS Tech Wiki, and found several devices listed for development including the Android, Blackbery, and iPhone, but not the Amazon Kindle. There are some commercially developed versions of LDS scriptures for the Kindle, but they do not appear to be of very good quality, and some users have complained of their poor navigation. Why is the Kindle being neglected by the LDS developer community? I think I would prefer to carry my scriptures to Church on a Kindle than the massive volumes that are available on paper and print. The Kindle is more readable than the iPhone or Android. Of course Apple is expected to bring out a tablet PC shortly which may be a good replacement for the Kindle, and the existing iPhone app may work on that one. We will have to wait and see.
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mkmurray
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#2

Post by mkmurray »

I think the project idea is a good one, and technically it would seem easy to implement. I think all you would have to do is transform the scripture content into the proprietary Kindle file format, and let the Kindle book reader software do the rest of the functionality and features.
TechnoBabel-p40
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#3

Post by TechnoBabel-p40 »

mkmurray wrote:I think the project idea is a good one, and technically it would seem easy to implement. I think all you would have to do is transform the scripture content into the proprietary Kindle file format, and let the Kindle book reader software do the rest of the functionality and features.

No need. Just download these MOBI files and copy them to your Kindle. My mom has a Kindle, so I got these files for her. The cool thing about the Kindle is that it supports MANY book file formats.

http://members.cox.net/palm-os/kindle_scriptures.zip

A lot of content is available on lds.org that works great on Kindle.

TB
Ethem
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#4

Post by Ethem »

mkmurray wrote:I think the project idea is a good one, and technically it would seem easy to implement. I think all you would have to do is transform the scripture content into the proprietary Kindle file format, and let the Kindle book reader software do the rest of the functionality and features.

Thanks for the suggestion. If it is easy to develop and the tools easy to use I wouldn’t mind having a go at developing it myself. I will have a look into that.
TechnoBabel wrote:No need. Just download these MOBI files and copy them to your Kindle. My mom has a Kindle, so I got these files for her. The cool thing about the Kindle is that it supports MANY book file formats.

http://members.cox.net/palm-os/kindle_scriptures.zip

A lot of content is available on lds.org that works great on Kindle.

TB

I think there is a “need”. “No need” is a bit premature. I don’t have a Kindle right now, because if I buy one it would only be for use with LDS scriptures in Church, and I am not going to unless I am convinced that there is a good implementation LDS scriptures on it that I can feel comfortable in using. The files you had sent were not all that impressive. I tried it on a PC implementation of the Kindle. There are several MOBI readers for the PC that can be downloaded for free, including an implementation of the Kindle from Amazon. The MOBI files looks very primitive and not easily navigable or intuitive. I it is nothing like as intuitive or sophisticated as the implementation of the scriptures on the iPhone for example. That is the kind of thing I was looking for on the Kindle.

Before starting this thread I had looked around for a good implementation of LDS scriptures on the Kindle. I found a commercial one here which did not have very good reviews. The users were complaining mainly about the poor navigation. Since then I have found another implementation here which seems to have better reviews, but still does not appear to be all that impressive. I think there is plenty of room for knowledgeable LDS to start a project for a decent implementation of LDS scriptures on all type of eReaders such as the Sony eBook, as well as the Kindle.
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mkmurray
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#5

Post by mkmurray »

Yes, and that is what I figured with any existing scripture implementations out there. If this project idea was accepted and sponsored by the Church (perhaps on the LDSTech Wiki), then the Church would provide you with an official scripture content set that is organized in an XML schema they developed. I have personally written XSL templates to transform this content into a different format for one of the mobile scriptures projects on the Wiki.
TechnoBabel-p40
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#6

Post by TechnoBabel-p40 »

I thought the Kindle had a single user interface for reading content that was commonly used by everything. I guess that shows what I know about it. Maybe I'm just not as picky as you guys.

TB
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mkmurray
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#7

Post by mkmurray »

TechnoBabel wrote:I thought the Kindle had a single user interface for reading content that was commonly used by everything. I guess that shows what I know about it. Maybe I'm just not as picky as you guys.

TB
Well I think that's true, but I imagine their are certain tags or notifiers in the content you can use to notify the Kindle software of navigation abilities or other extra features that can only be found in the Amazon's proprietary file format (AZW). If you're gonna make content available to the Kindle, you might as well put the content in it's specific format to gain the extra features the software has to offer. I imagine while the Kindle can consume MOBI content, it just displays content as is and has no extra features. I could be wrong.
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#8

Post by russellhltn »

Ethem wrote:Why is the Kindle being neglected by the LDS developer community?
I suspect the answer to that is that the LDS developer community is rather small and there are a large number of reader formats out there. Given the high cost of that particular reader, I can understand why various developers may feel that the time is not ripe for working on that platform.
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Ethem
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#9

Post by Ethem »

RussellHltn wrote:I suspect the answer to that is that the LDS developer community is rather small and there are a large number of reader formats out there. Given the high cost of that particular reader, I can understand why various developers may feel that the time is not ripe for working on that platform.

It is cheaper than iPhone or Android, and crucially, it is much more readable. It is just right from my point of view for taking it to the Gospel Doctrine class!—provided that it is easily navigable, and you can quickly find what you are looking for. And for the cost, you can read thousands of other books on it. Books formatted for the Kindle are a lot cheaper than ordinary paper books.
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#10

Post by russellhltn »

In addition to the Kindle, there's Sony's offering. There are pros and cons to each. I'm just saying there's a lot of incompatible formats out there. Developers tend to gravitate to the leaders.
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