Scripture App Builder -- non-Scripture texts

Outdated. To make an app from non-Scripture texts, use Reading App Builder. 
The principles outlined here probably work with Reading App Builder, which works very similar to Scripture App Builder. I would guess the sample files will work  but I have not tested this. Some of the details in the screenshots may be different with RAB. 

 

Scripture App Builder is an exciting new program that will build an Android app containing text, images and sound, so that texts can be shared with smart phone users. As you would guess from the name, it was primarily written with Scripture texts in mind. But it is perfectly capable of making apps out of non-Scripture texts. The information on how to do this is in the documentation, specifically in the Building Apps PDF file on the Documentation page. This page presents the same information, along with two sample Word documents. 

The key principles of preparing a Word document for importing into Scripture App builder:

• Images can be included in the document. 
  • If the image is too big for the page in the app, make it smaller by reducing the image size.
• Use Word's built in style Heading 1 for headings.
• Enter a hard page break (Ctrl+Enter, or click Page Break on the Insert tab (left edge of ribbon in Word 2013) to divide pages.
• If you want your story titles in the app navigation list, put the stories in separate documents
• Save your document files as DOCX.

Sample Files

These two documents contain two hypothetical folk tales, complete with illustrations. This example does not contain any audio.

Each tale is in a separate document. The first file looks like this:

The resulting app looks like this:

Images

My images are from the Art of Reading package that comes with Bloom.

One example. The original size was 607 x 750 pixels, but that was too big.

 

I made a smaller size by reducing it in Paint. This one is 304 x 300 pixels.

(I opened the image I wanted to reduce in Paint, clicked Resize on the toolbar, set the percentages to 50% and saved as a new file).

Fine Tuning the App

When you have gone through the initial dialogs to set up the app, and included your files, you should see under Main Collection a list like this:

If you want to change the order of the tales in this list, you can click and drag the items in the list. Move one up or down to change where it displays in the list. If you want to change the title of a tale in the app, you can double click on it, and change the title in the Book Name box. 

In a non-Scripture app, you may not have numbered chapters. You may want to turn off displaying the chapter numbers, by going to Features, then the Formatting tab.

In files like these, each page in a story is a new chapter. You would see the chapter number displayed at the top of the page like this:

Editing your content

When you begin making an app, you may soon find there are things you'd like to change about your text. There are two ways to revise your content.

1. When you attach a document to an AppBuilder project, AppBuilder makes a copy of your document and stores it inside the project folder. For example, this is where it stored my two documents when I attached them to an app. Tales Round 3 is the project name I gave AppBuilder when I created the project.
   
   You can edit these documents that are inside the Appbuilder project folder. When you edit, then rebuild the app, the new app file uses your updated content. 
2. If you would like to maintain the official or most up-to-date copy of your document in a different folder than inside the AppBuilder folder system, you can do that. If you make changes to a document you can reload the new document into App Builder by deleting the book you've updated. Right click on the book name and choose Remove Book.
   
   After deleting, go back to the Main Collection pane, click Add Books and reattach your revised document.

If you want to change the version number of your app to show that your content is updated, you can set the number in the apk tab of the app part of the project list.

In this example, my app will now have the version number of 1.1. This number is visible to users when they install the app.