saved by grace, coder by calling
Our Language Software Development group was honored to receive the Exelerate Award, given in celebration of excellence, innovation and partnership.This award recognized three specific language resources that we produce: Keyman, Bloom, and Scripture App Builder. See more details about the award or watch the ceremony. Past winners of the award include the YouVersion Bible app and Jesus Film app.
Scripture App Builder (SAB) can create Scripture videos based on templates and the audio included in an SAB project. ScriptureEarth has used this feature to create thousands of videos with millions of views. However, the process has been time intensive and has required a commercial slideshow video product to generate the videos (so not many people have used it).
In 2018, some developers from our language software development team participated in the Urbana Hack4Missions where participants worked on 9 challenges of missional importance. One of these challenges was the “automatic creation of text-based Bible story videos.” Due to the work of these participants, they proved that it was possible to use free software libraries to integrate the process directly into SAB. We have been wanting to take this research and include it in SAB but have not had the time to pursue it.
Last year, students from Gordon College decided to work on this project called Story Builder as their Senior project. This open-source software takes the text, audio, and images for a story and generates a video with Ken Burns effects (panning and zooming) of images during the reading of Scripture verses. They based their work on what was demonstrated at Urbana and developed it into a full product. Chris mentored and directed the student team.
At the end of the school year, the students completed the project and we were able to include what they developed into Scripture App Builder 10.0 as one of the major new features. It is already being implemented by our users and is saving them time and producing valuable video for language communities. What used to take weeks to do can now be done in a day or overnight! Read below the feedback that we have received from one of these users.
The Story Builder has automated the video creation process. I have built literally hundreds of Scripture videos in the past couple months. Just today I built a whole collection of videos —Bible stories from the Gospel of Mark in the Keyagana language of Papua New Guinea. 40,000 people who speak this language can now watch for the first time the stories of Jesus in their own language.
Bill Dyck, Publications Services Team Leader, SIL International
What a time saver —I can have the process work even when I am away from my computer. And it has relieved my carpel tunnel issues! Besides dozens of hours in the past couple months, it has saved me multiple thousands of mouse clicks and fixing typos.
Chris is on the App Builders team which maintains desktop apps that generate contextualized mobile apps. See the article Why Another Bible App? for more details. These desktop apps are:
Last year, Chris was surprised that his colleague had created a new desktop app called … Keyboard App Builder (KAB). From the name it was easy to figure out what it did, but Chris wasn’t sure why he had done this.
The Language Technology team has a product called Keyman to create language-specific keyboards. There are Keyman apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and even in a web browser. Our current app builders can include a Keyman keyboard in the created apps to help with text input in the app. So why did we need to create contextualized keyboard apps?
The keyboard app allows the user to add a system keyboard to their device, enabling them to type their language within other apps such as Gmail, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It also helps users of the keyboard app find the Scripture app in their language. Chris was working with one of the Keyboard App Builder users on an issue and asked him about how KAB is being used. Please read his story…
Discovering Scripture With Keyboards
“Siares” is the code-name for the national language of a small country where being found in possession of the Bible can get you a long prison term. It’s the only country in the world remaining for which the majority language does not have a complete New Testament translation, but several books have been published in a Scripture app. The problem is getting this Scripture app discovered, as an advertising campaign could result in a backlash. Enter Keyboard App Builder: The keyboards available to mobile users in this country are a pain to work with, but we’ve designed a much easier keyboard for the “Siares” language, building it with Keyboard App Builder. Since releasing it a few months ago, it’s become one of the most popular keyboards in this country, with over 5000 users. The keyboard app makes it easy for users to discover the Scripture app. Please pray that many would discover the Scripture app and encounter the claims of Jesus there.
The About Coronavirus book is just one example of how people are using Bloom, a desktop application that makes it easy to create simple books and translate them into multiple languages. Bloom is designed for new computer users in mind, and it has special features to guide them in simple book making, so people need far less training than alternatives like Word, Publisher, or InDesign. Bloom’s Book Library offers books from around the world for the users to translate into a local language. They can also share books that they have made. Watch the video below to learn more about Bloom!
We started work on Scriptoria in the spring of 2018. We completed the minimum viable product (MVP) back in April and made Scriptoria generally available. We are so thankful to Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) for providing the funds to hire DeveloperTown to assist with making the software. While working with them, we started to learn what we would need to know to continue the work. Over the summer and fall, we have been working on fixing bugs and adding features to make it work well (more than just the minimum 👍).
We have also been making changes needed for our partners: Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH), Kalaam Media, and Scripture Earth. Both FCBH and Kalaam have hundreds of apps that they are currently maintaining on their own. They have so many, that Chris is working on some special code to make it easy for them to create all the projects and in Scriptoria. We are looking forward to these partners being more productive using Scriptoria!
In early April, Chris traveled to The Netherlands for the Eurasia Media Distribution Consultation (EMDC). This is the conference that Chris has attended for the last 4 years which alternates between Thailand and The Netherlands. About half of the participants are on-the-ground language workers, church planters, etc. and the other half are either service providers (like Chris) or media experts/providers.
Similar to previous years, Chris spent the first four days assisting with the Mobile Apps for Ministry training track which help attendees learn about designing, developing, and marketing mobile apps. There were also sessions on using Scripture App Builder to create apps using their existing content (including video — see about Gospel Films). The days were busy with training, answering questions, and helping attendees with projects. The evenings were filled with preparation for releasing Scriptoria during the main part of the conference.
When Chris left the United States, there was still quite a bit of work left to do. With the help of his colleague back in West Virginia, David Moore, they were able to complete changes necessary for the initial software release, deploy the new software to Amazon Web Services, and migrate all the projects (over 600) from the previous Scripture App Publishing Service to Scriptoria.
While at the conference, Chris was able to talk with several organizations (like Faith Comes By Hearing) interested is using the service. We are now working with them to add their apps to the service and to develop features they will need to best utilize the service. Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to use the skills you have given to provide more access to your Word to more of your people!
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Chris has been the technical lead and primary developer for the Scripture App Publishing Service. Last fall, they started working with two partners, Faith Comes By Hearing and International Mission Board, to plan an update to the service in order to 1) support multiple organizations and 2) customize the process of publishing apps for each organization.
This would require a significant re-rewrite to a portion of the service. About that time, Chris’ organization applied to Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN) for direct funding of certain projects including the Scripture App Publishing Service. A very generous grant was given by ETEN that has allowed them to sign a contract with DeveloperTown to design and develop the software that needs replaced. They didn’t have the staff to complete this work internally and this is a great opportunity to complete the work. Praise God for the resources and talents He has made available!
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Chris has been the technical lead and primary developer for the Scripture App Publishing Service. The initial rollout of the service utilized a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) strategy which provides just enough features to satisfy earlier customers and provides feedback for future development. The service has been running for about a year and they have gathered valuable feedback for what needs to be done in the next release.
They have also communicated with other partners who have similar needs. Two of these partners, Faith Comes By Hearing and International Mission Board(IMB), have stepped forward to help with the future development of the service. IMB has a team in Bulgaria who they employ to fulfill different IT needs. Chris has been tasked to design the expansion of the Scripture App Publishing Service and train the IMB team to do the development. He will be traveling to Bulgaria to do the training sometime this fall. Please pray for wisdom for Chris to know how to design the system so that it can be effectively implemented by the Bulgarian team and be flexible for the diverse needs of many organizations.
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Partnerships are very important for the spread of the Gospel. We are grateful that Chris can focus on developing software that accelerates Bible Translation and distribution. Recently, his organization partnered with Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH) and Renew Outreach to make changes to Scripture App Builder that will allow them to open new doors to distribute Bible apps with text and audio to minority language communities.
FCBH has Bible recordings in 1,066 languages. They distribute these recordings using the Bible.is app for Android and iOS devices (and others). This requires that the user install the app from an app store. Due to licensing restrictions, the audio has to be streamed over the internet. This is a huge barrier (and in some cases dangerous) to many minority language communities. Renew Outreach works with FCBH to distribute the audio on lockable Micro SD cards and Wifi hotspots (LightStream) to be used in audio players and feature phones.
With the changes made to Scripture App Builder (we are collecting usage data and transmitting when the user is on-line), now FCBH and Renew Outreach will be able to create apps with the audio and text bundled into the app and distribute the app virally.
“Everyone is VERY excited about using these apps. I met one new friend in particular who runs a ministry in a restricted country. He’s very well networked in his nation, knows approximately 80% of the believers, of whom there are few. Thanks to this app, now they will all be able to get Bibles safely because it’s illegal to distribute Bibles otherwise and easy to get caught with print ones. … These are the kind of folks who will now be able to get Bibles in their language for the first time, unhindered by outside forces. Praise God and thanks for your hard work on SAB!”
— Brandon Honselek, Vice President/COO, Renew Outreach
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Chris has been working with colleagues on porting Scripture App Builder to macOS for the past couple of years. This program allows users to create Bible apps specific to a minority language that include synchronized text and audio that are easy to distribute. Best of all, the user can do this with no programming necessary. Before, users on Windows and Linux computers could only create Android apps. Now users of Mac computers can create both Android and iOS apps. We are very excited to announce the first release of Scripture App Builder for Mac!
“For the past two or three years, Bible translation teams around the world have been enthusiastically building customized Android apps to make the translated Scriptures available in both text and audio. But we kept getting asked, “So, when can we build apps for the iPhone as well so that more people in our region can get access to God’s Word in their language?” Now the waiting is over: Scripture App Builder for Mac has now been released – and translation teams can go ahead and build both Android and iOS apps. Thank you so much to David and Chris for all their hard work to make this possible!” (Richard Margetts, SIL Francophone Africa)
Scripture App Builder 3.3 for Mac / iOS
