The module system

One container format for everything the app reads and everything you write. This page covers the concepts and day-to-day management; the format itself is documented separately.

The idea

Most Bible apps draw a hard line between their content and your content. The translations are library data; your notes are rows in a private database. The two are handled by different code, exported by different means, and one of them is usually not exportable at all.

Lamp Bible does not draw that line. A translation is a module. Your notes are a module. A commentary series, a reading plan, a set of highlights, a devotional you wrote last Tuesday — all modules, all in the same container, all managed in the same place.

The nine types

Type	Contains	Editable
Translation	Verse text with optional Strong’s numbers, morphology, section headings, footnotes and red-letter marking	No
Dictionary	Lexicon entries keyed by Strong’s number or lemma, with senses and usage	No
Commentary	Exposition keyed to verses or pericopae, grouped into a series with front matter and bibliography	No
Book	A long-form publication in parts, chapters and sections, with footnotes and media — see Books	No
Plan	Reading assignments across a cycle, with per-day readings	No
Quiz	Age-graded questions tied to a plan’s readings	No
Notes	Your verse-keyed study notes	Yes
Devotional	Your long-form documents, with media	Yes
Highlights	Your highlight spans and colour themes for one translation	Yes

Both read-only and editable modules sync. Conflict resolution applies to editable types, since those are the modules the app can change. Read-only types are library content — installed, indexed, and otherwise left alone.

Bundled and installed modules

Content that ships with the app lives in a single bundled database, unpacked on first launch. Everything else — modules you import, modules you create — is a separate .lamp file in the app’s storage. The reader does not distinguish between them: a commentary you built yourself appears in the tool panel’s series list next to the ones that came with the app. A module you install with the same identifier as a bundled one takes its place.

Managing modules

The module manager is in Settings → Modules → Manager. It lists what is installed, grouped by type and filterable by type or by source — bundled or your own — with a summary of each: verse counts, entry counts, how many books a commentary series covers, how many highlights a set holds, how many days a plan runs.

Importing

+ → Import Module accepts four kinds of import:

A .lamp package — any module type. Its integrity is checked first, and if a module with the same identifier is already installed you are asked whether to overwrite it.
A Bible you own, as USFM, OSIS, Zefania, plain XML or a SWORD module — see Importing a Bible.
Notes as markdown — verse-linked study notes, from a single file or a folder.
Devotionals as markdown — either a folder of files, one entry each, or a single file with several entries.

Books import from the Books library, which also accepts a book’s source JSON and compiles it on the device. Other module types install from .lamp files only; to turn JSON into one, see Building a .lamp file. Because .lamp is registered as a document type, you can also open a module from Files, Mail or a share sheet and it will be handed to the app.

Creating

+ → Create New Module makes an empty notes module, devotional collection or highlight set. Highlight sets ask which translation they belong to, since highlights are translation-specific. Modules can be renamed and their descriptions edited afterwards.

Exporting

Notes and devotional modules export as markdown from their menu in the manager, for editing elsewhere. A single devotional also shares through the system share sheet as a .lamp file that carries its media. See Import & export.

Deleting and resetting

Modules can be deleted individually. My Notes and My Devotionals cannot be deleted, but Reset clears their contents while keeping the module itself. With sync on, a deletion or reset reaches your other devices too.

Why this matters in practice

Nothing is trapped. Everything you write can leave the app as markdown or as a package, at any time, without asking anyone.
Content is shareable. A set of study notes for a book, a highlight scheme for a class, a devotional series — each is a file you can send to someone.
The library is extensible. Anything you have the rights to use can be converted into a module and used exactly like built-in content.
Search covers everything. Because all modules land in the same indexes, one query reaches library content and your own writing together.

Importing a Bible — turn a Bible you already own into a translation module, no JSON required.
Downloads — an installable sample module of every type, with its source JSON, the schemas and the table definitions. The quickest way in is to take one apart.
Building a .lamp file — the mechanics: tables, compression, verification and installation.
Authoring modules — the data model: verse reference encoding, annotations, and the JSON shape of each type.