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Program: Zekr
License: Open Source/GPL
Description:
A multilingual Quran study tool with various features such as pronunciation, language translation, and various other features. Suitable for windows, mac, and linux.
Website:
http://zekr.org/
Comment:
It would be a great tool for just anyone who intend to further their knowledge in Quran or studying Quran. Great for educational purposes and daily usage.
Since we have a portable Holy Bible, why not have a portable Holy Quran. 
Here are the system requirements from the website. Does any of this really affect a portable version?
System Requirements
- Windows 2000, XP or Vista,
- Complex language support for your Windows enabled,
- Java (JRE) 1.4.2 or newer.
- Flash player plugin for your browser (Internet Explorer)
Are older version of Windows (pre-Windows 2000) still supported by Java?
Can the complex language support be portablized? I'm now sure what is involved with that.
I haven't used the program, so I don't know whether the flash support would affect the portabiliazation.
Here is Microsoft's how to install complex script and right-to-left language files. This requires a reboot and might require the install disk. I don't think that this prevents us from making Zekr portable, but it will only be possible to fully use it on computers that have Arabic installed. I don't know whether there would be limited use on computers that don't have Arabic installed. I'll look into this more later.
It requires Java but with the new Java Portable release should be all good. The other hurdles I can see are
* Complex language support for your Windows enabled
* Flash player plugin for your browser (Internet Explorer)
Not sure if these are portable killers so will have to wait for more advanced users to weigh in. Might be worth hunting down an alternative just in case.
Good luck
EDIT: Dagardner got in first = p
If it requires the latest Flash installed in IE, then it probably uses the IE rendering engine and requires Flash to be installed locally (not portably in, say, Firefox). This would be a major roadblock to portability. Can you check with the devs and see if there is a way around this? I'd really like to flush out our religious section with study tools for all the major religious texts.
I have contacted one of the developer to see if he can help.
Gave him the link to this discussion. Waiting for reply from him.
Zekr requires Windows complex rendering to be enabled only when you want to use Zekr in a right-to-left language (Persian, Urdu, Arabic, ...), or see Quranic chapter names in Arabic (which is not enabled by default). In the latter case, it just renders Arabic letters apart if complex language support is not enabled, and doesn't cause any issue. Anyway, a standard Zekr installation does *not* require complex language support unless user himself tries to do one of the above cases.
Zekr needs a browser for rendering Quran verses. It can be however an embedded XULRunner. Normally it uses OS default browser if no special info is provided. Otherwise one can force it to always use XULRunner by means of a configuration tweak: http://zekr.org/wiki/XULRunner (note that in case of a portable Zekr you need to change config.properties in [zekr installation]/res/config/config.properties.
A flash player is required if you want Zekr recitation support. Since we support XULRunner, one can also provide flash plugin inside the embedded XULRunner's plugin folder, or, totally disable Zekr audio support (audio.enable = false in config file).
For portability cases, configuration folder can be specified by a -workspace parameter passed to zekr.exe
Java (JRE 1.4.2+) is definitely a requirement for Zekr.
Mohsen.
That can work. We can prebundle XULRunner. Is there a way to point Zekr to a custom install of XULRunner on the drive rather than the local one?
As for flash, we can have our Zekr Portable installer pull down the current Flash plugin and add it into XULRunner.
XULRunner is installed globally or for the current user, so you normally it tries first if there is any XULRunner installed for the current user and then if there is any installed globally. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner_1.9_Release_Notes#Installing_...
There is one way, however, to manually pass XULRunner path to Zekr. See: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#specifyxulrunner. You should change zekr.bat and add -Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=[some path] as a JVM option.
If any flash player is installed XULRunner will use it AFAIK, and there is no need to manually copy anything.
There is something unclear for me here. If you are going to create a portable Zekr just for Windows platform, then why you need to change browser to XULRunner. Windows will always have an IE.
The version of IE on the PC could be any version and may have spyware or other issues. The version of IE on the PC may not have Flash. By bundling XULRunner, we can be sure the user gets the full experience consistently.
Bump.
Looks like there's no need to flash or embedded http server now:
"In this release we replaced flash-based mp3 player with a pure-Java mp3 player."
http://zekr.org/quran/en/the-news/1-latest-news/88-zekr-075-beta-1-released
I've make a PortableApp launcher for Zekr. It can be found here:
https://portableapps.com/node/23775
Please take a look and give me any feedback you might have.
Thanks,
Andy
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