A basic version of the Liturgy of the Hours using the public domain translation. Here's my initial calculations of how things would work:

"21 day rotation, 5 Hours a day, Office, Morning and Evening get 2 psalms, Midday and Night get 1

21 x 3 x 2=126
21 x 2 x 1=42

168, so 119 gets split into 19 parts I guess shrug"

In order to make it absolutely clear we're not trying to step on the USCCB's territory, we'll avoid parity with the LOTH as it stands. A 3 week cycle instead of a 4 week cycle, keeping Psalms in one piece (except for 119, that would be asking a lot), and for step 1, it will just be the psalms and the canticles.

And here's my outline for how to make this happen:

Step 1:
An offline useable group of html documents with the hours for each day:
-Nav page
--Week 1
---Sun
----Office
----Morning
----Midday
----Evening
----Night
---Mon
(etc...)
--Week 2
(etc...)
--Week 3
(etc...)

For this step we'll only include the Psalms and Morning, Evening, and Night prayer canticles.

Step 2:
Add readings
This will require some research, might look to pre-Vat II breviary or a monastic schedule to determine readings. Office in particular will be a difficult task.

Step 3:
Add Our Father to Morning and Evening, responsory, antiphons, invititory, petitions, and all other parts.
This might need to be broken into further steps. I'm hoping some public domain source will be found to make this part easier.

3 months later

Update: in order to have a place to "store" the LOTH docs, have put together a Library for the University: https://github.com/davidbaunach/university-library

Right now the Public Domain Bible is up there in .txt form. Have discovered that a simple html landing page and liked txt docs allow for easy offline usage, as well as loading in the browser. Will add the initial LOTH docs in such a format, may not be the easiest to pray with, but it will be viewable.

I also want to get this online and linked on the main Saint Maker website, but that will have to be another day. I'm thinking that might be my opportunity to further divest from Cloudflare, so I'll need to dedicate more than a few hours to that.

Update: in a fit of inspiration, got the basics of the LOTH done! All the psalms are there, as well as the Gospel Canticles for Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer.

I also added it to the Saint Maker website in the University Library: https://saintmaker.xyz/university-library/index.html

The amount of work remaining appears insurmountable, but God will provide!

On a personal note, I think for those who regularly pray the LOTH (I'm particularly thinking of myself), it's probably at a point where it can start being used. For Office, I'd just have two books going (one from the Old Testament, and one from the Church Fathers) and read a bit from each to suffice for readings. The parts for the other hours can either be used from the official LOTH, or added as you go along. I'll probably start doing this at some point in the future, it'll definitely help me work out the rough parts.

Laundry list of things that I see needing to happen at this point:
Psalms need to be formatted (this will be a challenge in sticking with txt format)
Our Father can be added
Petitions need to be figured out
Hymns need to be figured out
Readings are going to be a particularly difficult mountain to climb

But I also figure baby steps are the way to go, having something is better than nothing, and it can always be built up from there.

14 days later

Our Father has been added to Morning and Evening prayer.

I did a little exploring to see if the common Catholic translation of the Our Father is public domain, and I haven't been able to find anything positive or negative on that, so we might need to switch to a different translation in the future if the USCCB has decided to monetize that as well.

7 days later

Got a bunch more done today!

  1. Added the Ave Maria as a hymn for every single hour (will need to add some variety later)
  2. Added the Salve Regina to the end of Night Prayer
  3. Fixed a line break in the Our Father
  4. Added intercessions I distilled from Jesus's prayer to the Father in John 17 to Morning and Evening prayer

The intercessions are just a starting place. At first I was looking on the Internet Archive at out of copyright versions of the Office of Our Lady and things like that for ideas, but that wasn't getting me anything useful. So I decided to look at the various times Jesus prayed in the Gospels and just pull something from that. It'll work for now, we can build on it or go in a different direction later.

I think my next step will be little stuff, getting the psalms formatted for praying, making line breaks consistent, that sort of thing.

At this point it is able to be used for prayer I think, only need to supply the readings for Office on your own, and all the connecting stuff, which if you're familiar with praying the LOTH, is easy enough. I think I'll start using it myself.

There's still a ton of stuff to make it useful to a general audience, but we're getting there!

Found (or more probably found again) a helpful source in this project: the Divinum Officium project (https://www.divinumofficium.com/www/horas/Help/credits.html). As the link shows, pretty much everything used is in the public domain when it comes to English translations, and in the immediate future, I'm interested in using it for the opening and concluding dialogues at the very least. Another thing it might be useful for is the antiphones for the psalms.

On a related note, using this to refresh myself on the structure of the pre-Vat II breviary has been helpful, in that it shows we're kind of hitting a middle ground. The psalms done over three weeks instead of four or one, a simpler structure more like the pre-Vat II breviary, but the use of the vernacular for significant portions like the LOTH. It seems like a good goal to aim for to sit somewhere in the middle. Though of course it's all public domain, so anyone can fork and go in a different direction.

Decided to ring in 2025 by working on this project! Got a ton done:

  1. Added opening and closing dialogues to every hour (taken from divinum officium)
  2. Switched from the Our Father to the Pater Noster (still can't find definitive info on the copyright status of that translation of the Our Father, so sticking with the Pater Noster just to be safe)
  3. This was the big one: added readings to every hour! Broke the entire Gospel of Mark into 105 readings so each hour can have one. Get to read the Gospel of Mark, as well as all 150 psalms every 3 weeks!
  4. Added a reminder to add a reading to Office from scripture, a doctor of the Church, desert fathers and mothers, or Church council.

It's getting so close to completion! Thanks be to God for the direction and motivation to go from nothing to an over 10,000 line txt document!

Got the rest of the easy stuff done:

  1. Added antiphons (gleaned from divinum officium) to most of the psalms, as well as to the Gospel Canticles. I picked these antiphons at random from divnium officium, obviously we can get something better figured out later.
  2. Some minor formatting fixes, as well as fixing two psalms that were joined by mistake

And then I started on the stuff that's going to take a while:

  1. Reformatting the psalms, readings, and canticles to more easily pray them (have only done this for the first two hours)

This part is going to be a slog. HOWEVER, I have been using the Public Domain LOTH for the last few days, and at this point, and especially once everything is reformatted, it's ready to use, especially for those familiar with the USCCB LOTH. A ton can be done to improve it, but the basics are all there. And the coolness factor of praying all 150 psalms, and the entire Gospel of Mark in 3 weeks, cannot be denied!

a month later

Here's the process I'm using for reformatting:

Psalms:
Remove first line if it's an intro
Remove verse numbering
Each new sentance on it's own line, break long sentances (make it make sense for group recitation)
Add the Gloria Patri

Spacing:
Double line break between sections, single line break elsewhere

Readings:
List chapter and verses
Reformat for sensibility, just needs to be read by one person

I might break it up and only work on one part all the way through (might make it go faster in my mind)