A few days into the experiment, i'm convinced that Apache Forrest is the way i'm going to build and maintain the SemanticBible website. Basically it's a simplied application of their Cocoon publishing engine, but in this case "simplified" still includes an awful lot right out of the box, once you've figured out how to customize the content. That includes

• generating HTML pages (and PDF files!) from XML templates with several helpful document models (document, FAQ, how to, and others) using XSLT
• automatic generation of tabbed navigation that directly reflects the site structure
• a few different skins that can be customized with CSS (but i haven't tried this yet)

They've organized around the Apache model, so there's some conceptual structure that you need to wrap your head around. But the benefits of being able to focus on content, and having a quick automatic build of the entire site (including XML validation, link checks, and the rest) makes it much more attractive than extensive hand-tweaking just to get the cosmetics right. Life is too short to surrender valuable content to fine-tuned presentation, if you don't have to.

From Pie Menu Central:

Pie menus are a naturally efficient user interface technique: directional selection of pie slice shaped targets.

I'd never heard of pie menus before today, but they might support an interface that i've been imagining (without actually knowing how to implement it) for navigating the life of Jesus. This was the idea that got me started on the Composite Gospel Index (CGI), though just preparing the data wound up taking me a couple of months.

The idea is to start with "Jesus" in the center, surrounded by major elements of his life recorded in the Gospels: his birth, his teaching, his healings, his miracles, his last week, his crucifixion, his resurrection, etc. Each of these would then open up to a second level of detail: his teaching about faith, his teaching about the Kingdom of God, his teaching about money, etc. Finally each of these branches would terminate in the Gospel source for that pericope. The idea is to provide a dynamic, interactive, topical approach to reading the story of Jesus.

I'll be looking more at pie menus to see if i can set up a prototype.

Well, the Kronos Quartet/Tigerlillies album my brother Myles recorded and mastered lost out to Yo-Yo Ma at the Grammys (i'd have thought that 13 previous Grammys would be enough for Yo-Yo, but noooo). Still, just being nominated is quite an honor.

But i'm thrilled to see the album by Harp 46, our friends April, Nuc, and Posido, climb to #6 on the Top 100 chart at New Age Reporter.

Dave Winer announces the Holy Bible is available as an RSS feed.

Dave's always on the cutting edge, but this time Blogos readers have already been there.