Gospel Library for iPhone
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With the success of the Apple iPhone, many desire to carry the scriptures on their iPhone device so that they can read and share the scriptures anywhere. Although the online scriptures program has some optimizations for the iPhone, there is a need to be able to have the scriptures in an offline mode, instantly available.
There are several iPhone scriptures already available in the iTunes store. However these versions are either not licensed by the Church or do not use the official scriptures and contain all of the bookmarks, links, and information that are only available from the Church.
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Status of project
- This App was released on the App Store on April 9th 2010. [1]
- The video below shows the progress of the current iPhone scriptures application being developed.
Support
Visit the Gospel Library support - iPhone page for help and to provide feedback.
Project objectives
Test viability of the product
This project will serve as a litmus test as to whether the Church will endeavor to produce the scriptures on this and other mobile platforms. Although it is not expected, there is a possibility that this project could be canceled by the Church.
Engage with the community
Because of the limited resources of the Church, the Church desires to engage with the community to design, build, and test this application. Long term support and maintenance of the application will also be performed by community volunteer members.
Offline mode
This means that books will reside in their entirety on the device and be referenced quickly and easily by the program. This is critical for an iPhone scripture app, as it allows users of the iPod Touch (Which can only connect to the internet using a WiFi connection) access to the scriptures. It also means iPhone users can use the app even in places they cannot get a cellular data signal, or when the phone is placed in "Airplane Mode" (as to eliminate distractions caused by phone calls and text messages). Additionally, for some persons, bandwidth may be limited or expensive and storing the data locally means it only has to be downloaded once.
Single source for scriptures text
To eliminate the chance of errors in the scriptures, the Church is implementing a single source for all of the scriptures text. This single source is XML based. All scriptures media will be rendered from this format, including print, and electronic formats. The result is that all scriptures have been heavily vetted and checked for accuracy in all of the languages that the scriptures are made available in. Because of this, however, the iPhone scriptures application will need to support reading and rendering the scriptures in this single source format. An alternate goal of the single source scriptures text is to be able to render the scriptures in a consistent way across mediums. Although page layout may differ from mediums, the other formatting characteristics should be consistent.
Provide a platform for more content
Although the primary goal of this project is to provide the scriptures on the iPhone, this platform should support other types of books and articles, such as Ensign and Liahona articles, lesson manuals, etc.
Provide a tool for studying and annotating the scriptures
This project will provide a way for individuals to study the scriptures on their iPhone (and other mobile devices) and save remnants of their study that persist and can be viewed with or without the iPhone. In hopes of establishing a standard, an open schema for defining annotations will be published to enable portability of scriptural annotations.
Internationalization
As the number of languages expands for the online scriptures, these same scriptures database can be leveraged on the iPhone. Currently the online scriptures is released in 12 languages with more to come over the next year.
Launch other platforms
Concepts, code, and ideas learned with the iPhone application will be leveraged for other platforms, such as the Android, BlackBerry, and other platforms.
Requirements for participation
Because of the sensitive and sacred nature of the scriptures, those wishing to be involved can visit tech.lds.org/volunteer for more details.