Blue GNU caught up with Chris Debenham, the primary developer behind Lyricue, to learn how the program upholds his IT philosophy.

First, would you mind telling me a little about yourself, where you live and your interests?
I live on the Central Coast in NSW, Australia. A beautiful area with great beaches and forests. As such I enjoy surfing and rockclimbing though I don't have as much time for them as I used to. I am also a deacon at Erina Community Baptist Church.

When and why was Lyricue started?
It was started back in august of 2001 and had it's first release in September that year. At the time it was known as LDS but we renamed it to Lyricue in 2004.

I started it because we had access to a projector at church and I wanted to play with it :-) At the time I had a look around and couldn't find anything suitable so we used Openoffice.org for a while, but I wanted something a bit more suited to how our worship leaders ran things. They kept jumping around in songs, changing songs halfway through the service and stuff like that. As such Openoffice.org got too cumbersome and so I started to write Lyricue to fit church usage specifically.

Where does the project stand at this point?
Lyricue is pretty mature at this point and has been handling things at many churches for a long time now but there are always plans for improvements. Things such as better network handling, multiple synchronised/independent outputs, a bluetooth client and hopefully a newer server display with more capabilities. At its current state it can do handy service-type things such as dynamically display bible-verses or automatically split the reading over multiple pages, associate a different background with every page and many more things. Check the main webpage for more. It has also been translated into five languages currently which is particularly good since I can only speak one :-)

How many active developers currently work on Lyricue?
It is mostly myself and Clint Turner but we have received patches and translations from others, probably only 5 or 6 actively though. It depends on how busy people are and if they have an itch to scratch.

What is your primary development toolset?
The code is written by hand in vim and the GUI is done in Glade-2. Other than that we use cvs for source-code management but that is about it.

Many projects depend on libraries, tools, etc. developed by others. What are some of the key external elements you rely on?
Without the excellent work of the GTK2-Perl people Lyricue wouldn't exist. Via GTK2-Perl we use gtk2, gladexml and gnomecanvas. We also use mysql/sqlite for holding the database and can use bibles from the SWORD project.

How does Lyricue compare (in your view) to other projects?
To be honest I don't know how well it compares to other similar projects that much, but I'd like to think we compete well :-)

From what I've heard the main things we are missing is automatic import of PPT files (which I currently do by exporting to png files from Openoffice.org) and some fancy effects like text over video. But we do have a few extra things like our ability to quickly show up any bible verse in any translation (that is installed) which has proved itself to be a lifesaver on many occasions.

I think the biggest advantage we have is that we are 100% free/open source and run on free/open source platforms. Every dollar saved by not having to buy a proprietary OS/app is another dollar that can be spent by the church in ministry. Also since it is opensource and written in perl it is fairly easy for people to modify to their needs.

Another nice thing is that Lyricue is designed to work over a network, so you can have multiple clients controlling the server and new clients are simply to write.

Can you give me any idea of how big and/or active the Lyricue user community is?
That would be cool to know :-) I do know we have users all over the world, from Australia to the USA, UK, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Germany and too many other places to list. It has also been used at events with multiple thousand people attending.

What needs to be accomplished before the next release of Lyricue?
The main thing I'm working on now is re-working the network layer to allow for multiple projectors/displays to be controlled. This will open the door to things such as including chords on one display for musicians without confusing the congregation.

What are the biggest obstacles the Lyricue team faces in development?
Time is the main problem but my pet peeve at the moment is the limitations of gnomecanvas.

Is there anything else about Lyricue you think our audience should know?
We always welcome new users, suggestions, contributions and criticism. The biggest selling point of Lyricue over using a presentation program is the ability to quickly jump directly to any page in any song, and even add new songs halfway through a service. This is a great help for those times when the worship leader feels led to leave their pre-planned order of service.