a backlog of lightbulb moments

Okay I admit. The title of the blog posts are usually as random as a phrase from a song I'm listening to while I write or something. Any way, I've been toiling with the idea of starting an open source project to create a download-able 'text' yoruba bible (I admit that there's probably one but I've not found it yet).

Thanks to the qbiblefree app (yes, I still use my N900 - and I'm not changing it till something better - read more hackable - comes along), I found out about Zefania XML format. So now I kinda know what format the bible would be in if I were ever to consider starting the project. The next question - were to get actual yoruba bible data from was kinda solved with a quick google search. The good people at http://www.africanportal.net/ABO/BibeliAtoka/ have uploaded pdf files containing bible books. Yes, there's still the problem of breaking it down into chapters and perhaps verses. Sejda has been a little helpful there - the books can be broken down into pages. It's not a one-to-one mapping with the chapters but it's a start. I figure I can actually use the pages as they are now with a little of meta data stored in a noSQL database or just flat files.

Then there's the really crazy part of how to type of all the pdf text through a web interface. My javascript is presentable at best. Or put another way, I program better in scala than in javascript - and you won't want to gamble your life on the quality of my scala code. Any way today something cool happened. I found this site here: http://www.jawish.org/blog/archives/314-Javascript-Thaana-Keyboard-version-3.0.html. It's basically the same problem as I'm trying to solve but for a different language. So I've spent the last two hours adding little modifications and I think it's works... almost. In fact, here's an example., there's an example text field at the end of this post that uses the modified script to allow you to type yoruba alphabets. Hopefully you can toil with it and probably even leave a comment on what you think.

I realize now that there's very little excuse for me not to go ahead with this project now - that's the scary part. I even found an example of how the keyboard interface can be designed: http://www.branah.com/dhivehi. But maybe it's time I started it anyway. I know it's time to sleep - lightbulb!

I'll upload a downloadable script with tutorials and all that. For now - use the non-yoruba letters (q, z, c, x, and v) on the keyboard for the non-english letters (Ọ, Ṣ, Ẹ) in the yoruba alphabet. The x and v are for acute and grave marks (ami) - type them before typing yoruba alphabets that require ami - hope it works :)

Ki oore-ọfẹ wà pẹlu yin. Amin