Codex Editor

What is "Codex"?

Codex is a white-label, template app for developers who want to build their own scripture editing app for their language, church, or community.

Note: so far we only have one fork of VS Codium, namely Scribe V2. We are hoping to add an additional layer in between VS Codium and Scribe, which we will call Codex. By doing this, we abstract the template app Codex away from being owned by BCS and shift it into a more neutral ownership model.

Codex will be a live fork of VS Codium, which is a set of build scripts that builds VS Code from source so that is it completely "clean" (no Microsoft branding/tracking) and so it remains MIT licensed like the VS Code code base.

Codex allowed Scribe to release a scripture editing app with basic functionality in 2 months!

With VS Codium, you get access to the many benefits of VS Code (see Why VS Code?), automatic updates with security patches and even completely new features, a highly stable and time-tested extension API, and an extension marketplace that is in production and completely free. On top of this, all updates get pushed to users seamlessly!

In addition, any extensions that are created for Codex, Scribe, or any other apps the community creates using the white-label Codex repository will work with any of the other implementations, including the original VS Code itself, out of the box!

Any extensions made for VS Code already work with VS Codium, Codex, and Scribe, etc.

Why does Codex exist?

Software engineering is always a matter of tradeoffs, and we had to weigh the tradeoffs for our current requirements.

This is our current task: creating a What is Translator's Copilot?. In partnership with the Scribe/BCS teams, we are prototyping our experimental copilot software and getting it into the hands of users.

Our task is to make an extension, the Translator's Copilot, and we need to be able to focus on this task.

After some discussion and meeting with our entire Steering Committeeover several days in November of 2023, we determined that using VS Codium as a stable, mature code base for a new version of Scribe would provide the most efficient path to developing these new AI tools and getting them to users for feedback. This made sense for the Scribe team, who was spending more time on code maintenance as opposed to building new features their users needed.

This situation was the genesis of "Project Accelerate" (see What was Project Accelerate?), and our success here led us to consider Project Accelerate complete, allowing us to be more focused and directed as we continue building our copilot extensions for Codex.

Because the process was so easy, we figured it made sense to simply turn Codex into a template repository (which we will do shortly). It is our hope that developers in churches around the world will find in Codex an easy path to create a powerful translation editor app for experimenting with their own ideas for translation features that their community needs, with a name and brand that they themselves can own.

Where can I find an example?

The BCS team has a repository for Scribe V2, which creates new releases automatically when VS Code/Codium has an update.

The first release of Scribe V2 was published and ready for download only 42 days after we began the project. 6 days later they had a second release!

Are you building a platform?

No. We do not view Codex as a platform, but rather as a white-labeled template app. There are a couple of important reasons for this distinction:

• A platform implies you come to one place for a service/tool/community/etc. A white-label template is something anyone can copy and own. Facebook, Google/G Suite, and Shopify are examples of platforms.

Platforms enable things that you can't do anywhere else. We are not opposed to platforms, but we are also not interested in building one because it would detract from our aim of building a What is Translator's Copilot? as efficiently as we need to right now. Besides this, Platform.Bible is coming soon.

• Considered from a code and ownership perspective, there is virtually no difference at this point between Codex and VS Codium.

  • We are adding some simple pointers/scripts for white-labelling your own copy of VS Code (or living fork of VS Codium) with automated compilation/release scripts.

  • We will provide one or more baked-in extensions to help people initialize Scripture Burrito projects and automatically install the right extensions to help them view/edit those projects.

• Codex is a lot like Wordpress, the content-management technology powering most websites around the world. It's highly extensible, completely white-labeled, and open sourced.