Several years ago, Logos introduced the Reading Cycle for Daf Yami. However, it has not been used further except as PB's despite a number of candidates being suggested such as the Book of Concord http://bookofconcord.org/reading-fullyear.php or Early Church Fathers Lenten plan http://www.churchyear.net/lentfathers.html or world wide multi-year program http://readthefathers.org/, the Catechism of the Catholic Church http://www.adventus.org/documents/CCC-ReadingPlan.pdf, or the Heidelburg Catechism http://www.crchurches.net/resources/creeds/HeidelbergCatechism/index.html ... you get the picture.
Is there some reason that the Reading Cycle appears to be an orphaned feature? Or am I expected to raise a fuss rather than a mild suggestion that some of these traditional programs be added? Or was it intended as basically a PB feature and you need to tell me to go make it yourself?
The Daf Yomi was developed and released as one resource in the Babylonian Talmud product collection. We've never thought of it as a software feature, so it's not an orphaned feature so much as an unusual resource.
We think that most of the reading cycles you suggest would be useful as pre-built reading plan templates rather than (just) as faux-lectionary resources. We have an open issue for adding more pre-built reading plans to the system, so that you could select any of these cycles as your calendar-based scheduled reading and have it show up on the home page, etc.
Right now, all pre-built reading plans go to all users regardless of what libraries they have. We are loath to include reading plans for resources you can't read, and so we have another ticket for a slight re-architecture of the Reading Plans feature so that we can bundle reading plans with resources so that, say, you wouldn't see a pre-built plan for reading the Heidelburg Catechism unless it was in your library.
Neither of these features is very large in terms of effort, but neither are they very high on the schedule; they're currently floating somewhere 6.9-ish range (but don't hold me to that).
In the meantime, any of the denomination-specific program managers might have plans to publish reading cycles as resources as part of their product configurations. I don't know of any such plans, though. Some of the ones you link to may be copyrighted and would require publisher permission.
I don't expect that raising a fuss will make our pace on this issue any less deliberate. In the meantime, it would be no skin off our nose if you want to create and share personal books and/or custom reading plan documents.
I do have a bit of a problem with making these template reading plans as the plans that I've listed are generally intended to be fixed date - secular or liturgical dates. This makes them communal - everyone is reading the same thing regardless of when they started the readings and regardless of how many times they have read the same cycle.
They bear much in common with the psalter cycles that are based on a calendar month. However they are unlike the four week prayer books that simply start on a Sunday, any Sunday.
I also think there is an advantage to having them contain the text as a lectionary does as some of them are also intended to go with preaching or Liturgy of the Hours cycles.
That is not to say that it is not useful to have the freer reading plans associated with them, merely to say that I am referring to the more restricted reading plans that are fixed date.
Okay, I'll admit not many have run into the old tradition of preaching the Heidelberg Catechism ... but it's cool and interesting to compare to what would have been read contemporaneously. Why you might not even consider a 16th century French Huguenot Psalter cycle essential [:O]
Right. Built-in plans can be affixed to a specific calendar date (the M'Cheyne plan currently is) and I would expect these would, as well.
FWIW, with reading plan documents and Faithlife groups, the community could exist at two levels: Everyone in the entire denomination is reading this at the same time, and also, my district/presbytery/parish/church/class/group is also reading in step and sharing comments just amongst ourselves using this collaborative reading plan document.
But none of that is a conclusive argument against also making resources. It can be both-and, or either-or.
Ah, the missing piece of data - I didn't know that any of the pre-defined plans were fixed date.
BTW I've thought for some time that a number of resources should have reading plans bundled with them. I'm glad FL is thinking that direction as well.
