I thought I was making a funny when I said that the good people at bab.la should make an iPhone/iPod Touch app for their on-line dictionary. It turns out that they were right in the midst of doing just that. Their first app is now available on iTunes, for German -> English. It’s free, and is a great way to work on your German (or Englisch).
They plan on producing apps for the other 24 dictionaries they have on the go. Wow.
A follow-up to the preceding post on the bab.la on-line dictionary portal. If you’re using Firefox as your browser there’s a bab.la toolbar (link), and if you’re using IE there’s also a toolbar (link). These plug-ins also include links to Google and to Wikipedia. Cool.
I’m waiting for them to create an iPhone/iPod Touch app.
Courtesy of David Whidden (a PhD candidate a Southern Methodist University), news about an iPhone app that has the Summa on it! He says:
For those of you who have entered the iPhone (and iPod Touch) age, you will be glad to know that you can now carry the Summa with you in your pocket. For just $2.99 you can download ‘ipieta’, which has the full text of the English Dominican translation of the Summa as well as the Latin text. You can read just the English translation, just the Latin, or read the two in parallel (see screenshot of question 1 of the Prima Pars). The software is well organized, so you can get to an exact article in just three touches. You can also do word and Boolean searches on the English translation. There is also the full text of Aquinas’ catechetical lectures.
In addition to the Summa, there are a host of other great documents on ipieta. You can get the full texts of all the ecumenical councils from Nicea to Vatican II (see screenshot of Dei Verbum), papal encyclicals from Pius VI through Benedict XVI, the Douay-Rheims and Vulgate versions of the Bible, the readings for the daily mass, a host of prayers, catechetical materials, and other valuable resources. All of the material is kept on your iPhone, so once you’ve got it you do not need Internet access to view the material. At $2.99 this is a steal.
It seems that there’s an app for everything…
This just in, from James Ginther at Saint Louis University:
Theologians Use Video Game Technology to Create Virtual Tour of 13th Century Basilica
Users can fly around structure and see famed frescoes up close
St Louis, MO (9 January 2007) – The Institute of Digital Theology, a non-profit foundation located in St Louis, Missouri and affiliated with Saint Louis University, announced today the release of the CD-ROM, "The Virtual Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi ."
This new computer software allows users to explore on their own computer this medieval Italian church. The Basilica contains frescoes from the workshops of the early Italian Renaissance painters, Giotto and Cimabue. As a three-dimensional model, the Virtual Basilica permits users to walk and even fly freely about the building.
The Institute has combined gaming technology and digital photography to produce an innovative product. "Most virtual tours of historic buildings combine static, 360-degree panoramas and two dimensional images," noted Dr Jay Hammond, the Institute's President and Co-Director. "We have moved beyond this and have taken advantage of the 3D environment that game engines create." The model is based on laser-accurate measurements of the building and over 4,000 digital images that were taken prior to the disastrous earthquake of 1997. "The result," said Hammond, "is an electronic version of the Basilica before some of its artwork was irreparably damaged."
"We also chose a game engine to build the model," added Dr James Ginther, Vice-President and Co-Director, "because it would ensure the Virtual Basilica would run on the average PC and not on expensive computers that only universities can afford." The Institute's mission, Ginther continued, is to connect preservation of the past with the widest possible access today.
The CD-ROM also has maps and guides for the artwork so that the virtual visitor can learn about the artists, what the pictures depict and their written sources. It also reveals how each fresco fits into the larger narratives of the building. "Church wall paintings and frescoes were meant to tell a story," said Hammond, "and the Virtual Basilica can help the modern observer to understand once again the stories the Basilica of St Francis."
Built in the thirteenth century, the Basilica has stood over 700 years as a monument to the life and work of St Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order. The main set of frescoes tells the story of Francis' conversion to a life of poverty and simplicity and how he became an inspiration for the reform of European Christianity. That message has shaped his order of "lesser brothers" who have continued to teach his message to all Christians. In the last few decades, the Basilica has also become a place for an inter-religious prayer service three times.
With the upper level of the basilica complete, the Institute will create similar virtual tours of the lower church, crypt and exterior gardens. In June, a design team will break virtual ground on another major project: a virtual tour of York Minster in York, England, the largest Gothic church in northern Europe
As the Institute is a non-profit foundation, all proceeds from the sales of the CD-ROM will support academic research in the Franciscan Tradition and advancements in digital media, such as electronic texts and databases as well as virtual modeling of historic sites.
The software is designed for Windows 2000/NT/XP. It is available for purchase the Institute's web-site, www.digitaltheology.org and on Amazon.
The Institute of Digital Theology is a non-profit foundation, affiliated with Saint Louis University. Its mission is to support research and teaching in Theological Studies and related Humanities disciplines through the creation of multimedia projects, web-based databases and other electronic resources. Housed in the University's Department of Theological Studies, the Institute focuses primarily on the preservation of historical artifacts and texts that have significant religious or theological meaning.
Contact:
Institute of Digital Theology
Room HU 124
3800 Lindell Blvd
St Louis, MO 63108
Email: publicity@digitaltheology.org
Web: http://www.digitaltheology.org
Now, let's see them do the same thing for Santa Sabina in Rome or San Domenico in Naples!
If you are a user of the Gentium font, you’ll be pleased to know that it has just been updated again (the third time), and is now open-licensed. Here is what they say:
We’re thrilled to announce that we have re-released Gentium under a free/open-source license - the SIL Open Font License (OFL). This will give much greater freedom to everyone using the fonts, and allow for easier inclusion in free, open-source and commercial software packages.
The only changes we’ve made in addition to the licensing change were a couple of bug fixes releated to PostScript glyph names and to the reported italic angle.
All of this can be found at
http://scripts.sil.org/gentium
We know that many of you have been waiting for eons for Bold and Bold Italic, more ancient Greek letters (like the digamma), etc. We have been working on these (very sporadically) over the last couple of years, but they’re not ready yet. We hope to have a greatly improved set of Regular and Italic out mid next year, and then work on completing the additional weights.
In the meantime, if the lack of one letter is hindering you, the OFL now gives you the freedom to change the fonts, and even distribute modified versions - with some conditions. We also warmly welcome your submissions of work to be included in the main Gentium project. See the Status page on the web site for details.
I don’t use this font on my system, although everyone I know of who does biblical Greek does, so you might want to check it out. The price is right…
Finally, Opera, the fine web browser, is free and without ads. It sports an RSS-aggregator, and remains among the fastest browsers out there. Very small footprint, and tidy. Firefox still rocks
You can find out more about it here.
Okus 1.2: a Greek reading programWow.
I recently learned of this program, made by Projects 225. It’s called Okus, and it is
a new computer application, Okus, which is available for studying ancient Greek texts. Okus incorporates new methods for reading ancient Greek, including color-coordination of words based on tense or case, fast point-click morphology parsing, and dictionary-entry browsing.
I downloaded the program, and found out that it has the ability to show Greek texts of classical works, in a color-highlighted way. You click on a particular Greek word in the text (say, from Aristotle), and a panel on the right of the screen gives you the definition of the work, and the declention or conjugation of the term as it is found in the text. The program currently contains many works of Aristotle (not all, alas, but it has the Metaphysics, the Nicomachean Ethics, the Poetics, Politics, and Rhetoric), and a ton of the dialogues of Plato. It contains Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey) and Hesiod. Importantly for the Thomist, it contains the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint. This is a perfect tool for someone whose Greek is terrible (like me!).
A demonstration version of this program is available for download at http://www.p225.com. At this time Okus is only available on Microsoft Windows (XP and 2000).
Just a few notes of interest to visitors about software that I use or am testing.
Please feel free to comment on this news item or to send me a comment about software that you use that you think would help others.
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
