e-Sword Documentation

Updated two sections of The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ:

i) where_to_obtain_e-sword_support_v_0_0_A0_1_20071104.pdf:

This is the updated version on where to find e-Sword support.

ii) versification_schemes_v_0_0_A_1_20071104.pdf:
The title of this document is a bit of a misnomer. Whilst alternate versification scheme data is included, that only applies to specific books or chapters. This document also includes versification information for some material that is neither protocanonical, nor deuterocanonical.

New documents in the series are:
i) internal_e-sword_numbers(Book_chapter_first_and_laste_verse_of_chapter.ods:
This is simply a spreadsheet of Table 117 in versification_schemes_v_0_0_A_1_20071104.pdf
This is in Open Document Format, which is the file format defined by ISO 26300 specifications. As such, it is the only internationally accepted standard file format for spreadsheets.

ii) internal_e-sword_numbers(Book_chapter_first_and_laste_verse_of_chapter.pdf:
This is Table 117 of versification_schemes_v_0_0_A_1_20071104.pdf in PDF format.

All of these documents can be found at http://www.esnips.com/web/eSwordFAQs/.

e-Sword Polls

This is a list of all of the polls on e-Sword support lists.
The lists are in random order.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-sword_theology_doctrine/polls

Would you like this group to be used an e-Sword based Bible Study?
Created on Oct 24, 2007
Closes 1 November 2007

If this list is used as an e-Sword based Bible Study, then what format should it take?
Created on 24 October 2007
Closes 1 November 2007


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSword_Advanced_Users/polls

Which of satan's doctrines, have entered the Christian world, since the time of Jesus Christ ?
Created on Sep 16, 2007
Ongoing/No closing date.

http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/e-sword-espanol/polls

Debido al tiempo que consume traducir, quiero hacer una pequeña encuesta acerca de la posibilidad de tener e-sword en español.
Creado en 17 de Ago, 2007
Ongoing/No closing date.

http://groups.yahoo.com/e-sword_off_topic/polls

Protestant Christian Affiliation.
CF http://www.iridis.com/glivar/List_of_Christian_denominations for a list of denominations, and definitions.
Created on Jan 23, 2005
Ongoing/No closing date.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSword/polls

How soon would like to be able to make your study notes into a commentary module?
Created on 5 October 2007
Poll closes 1 November 2007

Ben's Next Development Efforts. Keep working on BeST 2.0 or update BPeST (Pocket e-Sword import tool)
Created on Oct 23 October 2007
Closes 7 November 2007

How many of us live with the belief in an imminent expectation concerning the return of Christ.
Created on 21 May 2007
Ongoing/No Closing date.



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Torah_People/polls

Does the Hebrew text display itself properly?
Created on Feb 15, 2004
Ongoing/No closing date.

Are you prepared for an emergency, with an emergency kit containing the essential items, that you can grab quickly as if you'd have to evacuate at the sound of a firebell?
Created on May 5, 2004
Ongoing/No closing date.

If you had to pick between either "Good" or "Truth" to be the exclusive form of the Universe... which one would you pick?
Created on Mar 24, 2005
Ongoing/No closing date.

Forgotten Documentation

A document I had forgotten about.

List Guidelines and Announcements.PDF
Available from http://www.esnips.com/web/e-SwordSupportListGuidelines.

This document lists the official guidelines used for moderating roughly a third or the e-Sword support lists. Roughly a quarter of the support lists use it as an unofficial guideline.

Zoom and e-Sword

Over on the Βλογοσ blog was a mention of"The Long Zoom".

Scaling across the Bible looking at the various patterns.

Perry Stones talks on Prophetic End Times, using the history of Creation being one example.

Distribution of words and phrases across the Bible.

Distribution of ideas across the Bible. Then apply that to Church doctrine.

I can conceptualize how to do part of that using e-Sword.
The rest requires writing new components for e-Sword.

* A way to view time lines;
* A pattern recognition component;
* Something that pivots sub-sections of the results of pattern recognition and time lines;

If words matched ideas, then concordances would suffice for textual pattern recognition. But they don't. :(

Yet I can imagine drilling up and down passages, to determine whether or not John wrote the gospel of John, or the Documentary Hypothesis is merely mythical. This is where the need for original language resources is critical.

Or being able to verify that yes, the prophecies about the Messiah in the OT are repeated again as the prophecies for the return of Christ. And that both prophecies "run backward" in terms of Creation.

Or being able to see how a verse in Psalms is echoed in every other book of the Bible, without rebuilding it using "Bible Codes",or gematria techniques.

The end of an e-Sword Era

Bible Import Tool v 3.5 was released on 11 June 2006. That was the final version of BIT to be released.

Earlier today Ben announced that future versions of BeST would not directly import material from the Internet.

This is the end of getting NLT (1st Edition), NLT (2nd Edition), NIV, NIV-UK, and several other bibles for e-Sword, gratis. http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/ is a list of most of the Bibles that are affected.

This era has lasted almost five years. (BIT was released either late in 2002, or early in 2003.)

xan

jonathon

Providing Answers

I get a lot of email everyday.
I don't always remember what people ask me to create.
I don't always remember what people ask me to write instructions for.

So I'd appreciate it if questions about using were posted as a comment on this blog, and not sent as email.

Denomination Specific Packages

Wandering around the net, I discovered that Accordance has created a couple of Collections. Nothing interesting except:
* Jewish Collection which is being remastered. It contains the Mishnah, Readigns and Prayers, and the Tanakh Outlines, amongst other texts;
* Catholic Collection 1, which contains "the Introductory level offers Catholic Bibles, basic Bible study tools such as outlines and parallels, devotional works, Order of the Mass and the Catechism."
* Catholic Collection 2, which contains "the Advanced level of the Catholic Collection 2 adds the Vulgate, Canon Law, Vatican and other documents in English and most in Latin."
* Scholar's Collection which "gives you everything you need to explore the original Greek and Hebrew texts."
* Compubiblia which is a collection of Spanish material.

This gives me some more pointers on creating e-Sword collections. And what resources still need to be converted into e-Sword format.

Going down the list:
* Jewish : Mishna, Readings & Prayers, Hebrew Verb, and Tanakh outlines are not available for e-Sword;
* Catholic 1: Imitation of Christ, Practice of the Presence of God, Summa Theoligica, Order of Mass, Catholic Catechism, and NJB are not available for e-Sword;
* Catholic 2: Vatican 1 documents,Vatican 2 documents, and Canon Law documents are not available for e-Sword.
* Scholar's Collection: Qumran manuscripts, Aramaic Targums (tagged), Northwest Semitic Inscriptions with Index, Waltke & O'Conner, Jenni-Westermann Theological Lexicon, Mishna (tagged), Wallace pretty much covers what is not available for e-Sword;
* Compubiblia: Everything in their collection is available for e-Sword.

Looks like there are a couple of major resources to create, for e-Sword to have the same data as Accordance.

Documentation Update

I uploaded The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: Where to obtain e-Sword Support: V 0.0.0A.0/20071002 today to http://www.esnips.com/web/eSwordFAQs/

The most significant additions are:
* Korean language videos at youtube.com.
* English language videos at esnips;

I also found a Portuguese (Brazilian) support list.

xan

jonathon

Reading list /Resource Wish List

Over on Duncan Forbes blog was a reference to two reading list created by Mark Dever.

For Pastors:
http://www.9marks.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID314526%7CCHID598032%7CCIID1562504,00.html

For Lay people:
http://www.9marks.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID314526%7CCHID598032%7CCIID1644104,00.html

Wouldn't it be nice if everything on both lists as available for e-Sword?

Blank Bibles

I read about the "make your own blank Bible" craze on the ESV blog earlier today. Split your Bible into individual pages,then put a blank page between each page, and rebind it.

What happens when you fill up the blank pages?

Using the Study Note component in e-Sword, one can add a note of up to 65,535 characters per verse. Then use Text2DAO to convert the Study Note resource to a Commentary Resource.

There are two downsides here:
* You can't take a laptop to church;
* Converting from Pocket e-Sword to e-Sword is a non-trivial operation.

Maybe one day Pocket e-Sword and e-Sword resources will be sharable.

Updating The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ

I am updating the sections 40 through 56 of The e-Sword Utility program FAQ. These deal with issues in using resources with specific components of e-Sword.

I've gone through the archives of various lists, and not found nearly as many issues as I expected to. :(

Those sections currently average 20 - 30 pages each. Whilst I don't mind keeping them that short, I'd not sure that they cover anything close to the range of problems people encounter in using the different resources.

So, if anybody has any questions about any of the components of e-Sword, or can't get a specific resource to work, there is an opportunity to ask about.

e-Sword Resource Wishlist

This is a list of resources for e-Sword that I have been asked about. IOW, these are items that are on somebody's wish list.

• Catechism of the Catholic Church;
  
• Papal Encyclicals;
• Book of Common Prayer (1928 Edition);
• Book of Common Prayer (1977 Edition);
• The Rites:Volumes 1 & 2. (This contains the Rites of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church);
• Service Book and Hymnal (Lutheran);
• Service Book and Hymnal (Methodist);
• The Jerusalem Talmud (Hebrew);
• The Jerusalem Talmud (English);
• The Babylonian Talmud (Hebrew);
• The Babylonian Talmud (English);
• The Palestinian Talmud (Aramaic);
• The Nag Hammadi Library (Coptic);
• The Dead Sea Scrolls (Hebrew & Greek);
• The Targums (Aramaic);

I know I've been asked about some more,but I don't have them written down anywhere that I can find. :(

Documentation Updates

Where to obtain e-Sword support: V 0.0.70.0 / 200700606 was released on Thursday.

How to Create Modules using e-Sword: V 0.0.70.0 / 20070607 was released on Friday. This document does not define Harmony resource fields. That will be included in the next update to this document.

I expect to release updated editions of the following sections of the FAQ by 20 June:

• You want what as a Module?
• Information about the FAQ.
• What is e-Sword?
• How to use the Utility programs: JB.
• What are the e-Sword Utility Programs?
  

Updated e-Sword Documentation

On 3 May 2007, The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: Where to Obtain e-Sword Support Version 0.0.69.5 / 20070502 was released

First, the list that has gone.

e-Sword_unofficial_users_group: This list was originally deleted by a hacker on 27 December 2005. It was recreated soon after as a porn site. And now it has been deleted. :)

A couple of new lists made their appearance:

Catholic e-Sword: The function of this list is to focus on e-Sword material for Catholic Christianity.

Jewish e-Sword: The focus of this list is e-Sword resources for Jews and Noachides.

Christopedia: This list focuses upon creating resources in Danish for various Bible Study programs.

There also has been an explosion of resources available at esnips.com.

An updated version of Currently Available e-Sword Resources should be available around the middle of the month.

e-Sword Module Manager

The e-Sword Module Manager makes it very easy to install e-Sword resources on Ubuntu Christian Edition.

It is much easier to jump from tab to tab, rather than using the drop down box to select the type of resource one wants. It also is much easier to simply hit the appropriate tab, than scroll through the list of resources.

The downsides are:

• Only the first fifteen resources are listed;
• No description is provided/displayed for the resources;
• Only executable files are installed;
  

I have a copy of the source code. Once I have finished some of my other projects, I will fix those issues, and port it to Windows.

Additional features I would like to add are:

• Retrieve and install official e-Sword documentation;
• Retrieve and install unofficial e-Sword documentation;
• Retrieve and install user created resources;

Obviously this tool won't be able to retrieve resources from sites such as thechan.com. Maybe those sites can be mirrored at esnips.com.

e-Sword Resource Bot

This is an outline of a project I'll start working on in the middle of May --- unless somebody else does it.

This is a bot that will:
* Crawl the web looking for new e-Sword resources;
* Add the resource to a database when found;
* Create a list of new resources on a daily basis;
* Create a list of new resources on a weekly basis;
* Create a list of new resources on a monthly basis;
* Verify once a month that resources listed in the database are still available;

If things go as planned, sometime in the middle of June The e-Sword Module Database will be in beta on the Internet. It might be supplemented by a wiki that provides a more complete description of the resource.

e-Sword Resource Census

The current project target dates are:

19 April: Complete esnips.com folder listings;
22 April: Complete esnips.com file listings;
26 April: Complete yahoogroups.com file listings;
1 May: e-Sword.net and eStudySource.com census;
3 May: Complete census of other e-Sword repositories on the Internet.
4 May: Release Currently Available e-Sword Resources with all sections updated.

15 May: OPML file for all sites found/listed in Currently Available e-Sword Resources.

I expect to release daily updates of the section I am working on, until the census is complete.

File names for the sub-projects are:
* caem-esnips: Resources at esnips.com;
* caem-yahoogroups: Resources at yahoogroups.com;
* caem-internet: Resources of other repositories;

The file names are followed by an eight digit number. This is the year, month, and day that the file was updated.

A Scabbard for e-Sword

Most of the blogging about e-Sword that I will do in the future will be on the A Scabbard for e-Sword blog. http://sword-and-scabbard.blogspot.com/

Product Guides for e-Sword

Browsing Logos, I found this Product Guide ( http://www.logos.com/products/info/guides )

When I have finished:
* Updated the FAQ;
* The e-Sword Resource Census;
I will tackle doing something similar for e-Sword.

Along the way I expect to be sending out hundreds of emails verifying that the resources can be legally distributed in e-Sword format. I hope I don't have to resort to filing DMCA take down notices. But if that is what it takes to reduce/eliminate the number of pirated resources, then that will be done.

With a couple of changes the e-Sword Original Languages Library (http://www.forananswer.org/Top_General/E-Sword_Modules.htm ) could serve the same function for e-Sword as the Logos Bible Software for Ancient Languages ( http://www.logos.com/ancientlanguages) page does for Logos

Currently Available e-Sword Resources

Currently Available e-Sword Resources was released 6 April
http://www.esnips.com/doc/debbc25d-565a-4b48-bcbd-61f167cf8f33/currently-available-e-sword-modules_200703

It is, to put it mildly, very incomplete.
A look at esnips.com reveals:
* 51 folders tagged "eSword";
* 95 folders tagged "e-Sword";
* 542 files tagged "eSword";
* 705 files tagged "e-Sword";

I started going through them tonight. I probably will finish it at the end of next week.

A couple of observations:
* There are a number of modules that are either copyright violations, or posted in violation of the e-Sword licence;
* There are a number of files that are found in two, three, or more folders;
* The range of material is tremendous. People are using e-Sword as a digital book library;

I['m not sure which surprised me more to find:
The Bible in Zulu, or Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed. Or maybe The Communist Manifesto.

Road Map of Personal Projects

This is a rewrite of material that was on my original blog, that I posted 14 January 2007.

Documentation

Using e-Sword: The Harmony of the Gospel Component: I hope to have this released by 1 May 2007.

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ : My goal is to release an average of two sections a week.

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: Where to find e-Sword Support: This is updated monthly, on or soon after the first of the month. [It also counts as one of the sections I release that week.]

Currently Available e-Sword Resources: This is updated monthly, on or soon after the first of the month. This also counts as one of the sections of The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ that is released that week.

The e-Sword Module Database: Work on this document will be restarted in the summer.

Using Text2DAO: This should be released around 1 May 2007.
Using BeST: This should be released around 1 May 2007.
Using TheWORDpad Editor: This should be released around 1 May 2007.
Using ModulEditor: This should be released around 14 May 2007.

Translations:

I'll restart translating The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ after I have updated all seventy of the current sections. This should be sometime in July or August.

e-Sword Resources:

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ.top : Once all of the sections of the FAQ that will be publicly released, have been released, they will be combined into a topical file. [Somebody showed me an easier way to import it into e-Sword. :)

e-Sword as a Spiritual Journal: The updated version should be released around the middle of April. I hope to do quarterly updates of this resource.

English-Spanish Interlinear Bible: This should be released in May.

Old Castillian Bible: This should be ready around in May.

The Ten Commandments harmony resource: This should be released around 21 April.

Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary on the Bible: I've shunted this to January 2008.

Hawker's Poor Man's Dictionary on the Bible: I've shunted the editing of this to June 2007.

Strong's Numbers in Russian: This should be ready by May 2007.

The Concordance at the Bottom of the Page: An initial cut should be ready for release in June 2007. This is a long term project.

Jonathon's Concordance to Sacred Texts: An initial cut should be ready for release in June 2007. This is a long term project.

An e-Sword Hymnal. This is a very long term project.

A Map for every verse in the Bible. This is a very long term project.

The Bible in toki pona. This is a long term project. I'll restart work on this in 2008.

Utility Programs:

All work on these has been halted. I'll restart them once The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ has been completed updated --- which should be around August 2007.

If a project is not listed in this post, or in The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: How to Use The Utility Programs (JB), then it is not on my list of projects to do. Suggestions made as comments to this post, will be considered.

e-Sword 7.8.2

This post was copied from my previous blog.
It was originally posted on 24 December 2006.

On Friday (23 December) Version 7.8.2 of e-Sword was released.

The most noticeable enhancement is a "Harmony of the Gospels" component.
This can be accessed by clicking on "Bible" on the menu bar. The first item listed is "Gospel Harmony". Click on that and the new screen appears.

Currently, the only Harmony of the Gospel resource that is available, is based upon Robertson's work. From the design of the screen, it looks like additional resources will released.

Depending upon how this component works, it might be possible to add resources such as

• Prophecies of the Messiah in the Tanakh and their Fulfilment in the New Testatament;
• Parallel passages in First Kings, Second Kings, First Chronicles, and Second Chronicles;
• Pericopes of the Gospels;
• The Miracles of Jesus;
• Other New Testament Miracles;
• Miracles found in the Old Testament;
  

I am not saying that these will be created, merely that it might be possible to create them.

I'll wait and see what happens in the future.

Requesting New Modules

This post was copied from my old blog.
It was originally posted on 23 November 2006.

Back on the 19 November 2006, Mike Brandt announced on the e-Sword_tools list (amongst others) that he was working on a website that would list all of the publicly available e-Sword modules.

Somewhere in the resulting thread, a side discussion about how people could request new modules arose.

Proposed solutions are:
* A Wiki;
* A Blog;
* A mailing list;
* A web forum;

Of course, back on 23 October 2006, Pastor Throop put a message on his web forum (http://pastorthroop.com/modules/newbb/viewforum.php?forum=28) , asking if people had any module requests.

Meanwhile, over at http://www.thechan.com, a sticky note was put up on 13 October 2006 requesting that unorthodox translations not be requested on the website.

Over at http://cafe.naver.com/esword.cafe there is a never ending stream of requests for material, and an equally long stream of "How do I make modules for e-Sword?"
I can't tell if anybody is tracking, and working on the resources that are requested.

There is a long list of desired resources in Dutch on e-Sword_Nederlands at yahoogroups dot com. The issue here is quite simply manpower. There are far more modules than one or two people can easily create.

You have the same issue with German on e-Sword_German at yahoogroups dot com.
Again, the same issue about manpower arises. Some people on that list have also made their request known at eSword at yahoogroups dot com. Still, not much German material has been created. :(

If your interest is Romanian material, then Bible_Modules_developers_from_Romania at yahoogroups dot com is very well organized. This does not mean that they will provide the requested material, but they do track what is requested, and where it is in the production line.

I am not sure what happens on the Spanish support lists for e-Sword. Announcements of new modules are made frequently on those lists.

Which leaves the English language support lists. There are a number of messages on all of the lists, requesting specific modules. If a request catches a module creator's attention, and they have the time, then it might appear. Otherwise nothing happens to it. Nobody tracks the requests, much less where in the production cycle the material is in.

An Old/New Blog

For various reasons, I decided to create this blog, and delete my old e-Sword blog.

Articles in the old blog that I think are worth keeping,will be rewritten here, with a note stating that it is a rewrite.

The primary aim of this blog is to:

* Write about where I am in my ongoing documentation of e-Sword,e-Sword utility programs,and e-Sword resources;
* Write about the utility programs I am creating for e-Sword;
* Write about discussions on other Bible Study Software blogs;
* Write about features in other Bible Study Software and how to emulate them in e-Sword;

Road Map for Personal Projects

This is a list of my current projects, and roughly the priority that they have.

Documentation

Using e-Sword: The Harmony of the Gospel Component: I hope to have this released by the 20th January.

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ : My goal is to release an average of three sections a week.

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: Where to find e-Sword Support: This is updated monthly, on or soon after the first of the month. [It also counts as one of the three sections I release that week.]

Currently Available e-Sword Resources: This is updated monthly, on or soon after the first of the month. [Because of the time it takes to update this, I will consider this to be one of the sections of The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ that is released that week.]

The e-Sword Module Database: Work on this document will be restarted in the summer.

Using Text2DAO: This should be released around 21 January.
Using BeST: This should be released around 1 February.
Using TheWORDpad Editor: This should be released around 7 February.
Using ModulEditor: This should be released around 14 February.

Translations:

I'll restart translating The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ after I have updated all seventy of the current sections. This should be sometime in July or August.

e-Sword Resources:

The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ.top : Once all of the sections of the FAQ that will be publicly released, have been released, they will be combined into a topical file. [Somebody showed me an easier way to import it into e-Sword. :)

e-Sword as a Spiritual Journal: The updated version should be released around the First of March. I hope to do quarterly updates of this resource.

English-Spanish Interlinear Bible: This should be released in February.

Old Castillian Bible: This should be ready around in February.

The Ten Commandments harmony resource: This should be released around 21 January.

Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary on the Bible: I've shunted this to January 2008.

Hawker's Poor Man's Dictionary on the Bible: I've shunted the editing of this to June 2007.

Strong's Numbers in Russian: This should be ready by March 2007.

The Concordance at the Bottom of the Page: An initial cut should be ready for release in June 2007. This is a long term project.

Jonathon's Concordance to Sacred Texts: An initial cut should be ready for release in June 2007. This is a long term project.

An e-Sword Hymnal. This is a long term project.

The Bible in toki pona. This is a long term project. I'll restart work on this in 2008.

Utility Programs:

All work on these has been halted. I'll restart them once The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ has been completed updated --- which should be around August 2007.

With one exception, if a project is not listed in this post, or in The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: How to Use The Utility Programs (JB), then it is not on my list of projects to do. Suggestions, etc in comments to this post, will be considered.

xan

jonathon

Recent updates

On 1 January 2007, version 7.8.5 of e-Sword was released. This consisted mainly of bug fixes. The big update was 7.8.2. This can be found at http://www.e-Sword.net.

On 8 January 2007, the following documentation was released:

• The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: What is e-Sword? Version 0.0.69.0/20070106
• The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ: Where to obtain e-Sword support Version 0.0.69.0/20070108

They both are in PDF format, and can be found at http://www.esnips.com/web/eSwordFAQs/.

Back on 24 December 2006, esword-rss-feeds.opml was released. This can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSword/files/. You have to be subscribed to the eSword list to access that file. It contains RSS feeds for most of the websites that have e-Sword modules for download.

An updated version of Text2DAO was released on 3 January. Filename is SMM's_Text2DAO_2007-01-02_1640.zip. this is a very useful tool for creating e-Sword module. However, it was created as a toy for Geeks, and non-geeks might like the interface.
Always use this tool on a backup copy of the resource you are working on. Make lots of backup, adding the time, and date to the filename of the backup. It allows one to do things that are, at best, questionable dangerous. If what you do breaks a database table, it will crash, without issuing a warning. This file can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eSword/files/, and again, you have to be a member of that list to download it. One other caveat. If you haven't installed Text2DAO before, then download the Comprehensive Setup Install File from http://www.houseofmyrrh.com/SMM's_Text2DAO_Full.zip, after reading the instructions at http://www.houseofmyrrh.com/text2dao.htm