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Computers equipped with searchable Bible texts are a wonderful tool for reference and Bible study. For the past several years, I've mainly used a little program called http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/9983/BibleViewer.html BibleViewer, and its predecessor, BibleBrowser for this purpose. The main difference between the two is that BibleViewer uses the text of World English Bible, a public domain (no copyright) Modern English translation of the Holy Bible, based on the American Standard Version of 1901, the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensa Old Testament, and the Greek Majority Text New Testament, rather than the Authorized Version of 16ll (King James Version) that was used in BibleBrowser. The WEB is a solid translation, but I prefer the KJV's majestic cadences most of the time.

Lief M. Wright's E-Bible is the first such Bible software designed specifically for Macintosh OSX. It is currently available only with the King James Version text, which I find no hardship.

E-Bible lets you browse and search the Bible, read original-language definitions, and bookmark frequently read passages. An innovative "copy formatted" command cleans up text when copying passages to word processor.

E-Bible offers the following features:
• Quick jump to Bible verses
• History keeps track of where you're reading
• Bookmarks let you remember important passages
• Strong's Lexicon support lets you see what Bible words' original definitions are
• Powerful search lets you look for words or phrases in as much -- or as little -- of the Bible as you want
• The powerful "Copy Formatted" feature lets you copy and paste Bible passages as you read them -- without carriage returns and verse numbers, and with the passage location automatically inserted at the end of the quotation

To start the program, click on the E-Bible icon and you'll be presented with the main E-Bible interface, which is simply a row of buttons and popup menus.

Click the Jump button to start surfing. The first menu in E-Bible's interface is the Book menu, filled with the names of each of the Bible's 66 books, from Genesis to Revelation.

When you change the Book menu, E-Bible automatically searches its database to find out how many chapters the book you've selected has. It then tells the Chapter menu how many chapters are in the book, and the Chapter menu adjusts itself to let you choose any chapter from the book you've selected.

As soon as you change the Chapter menu, it searches the database to find out how many verses are in the chapter you've selected. Based on what it finds, it tells the two Verse menus to fill themselves with the entire range of verses in that chapter. For instance, if the chapter you've selected contains 31 verses, the Verse menus each are filled with 31 numbers, from 1 to 31.

The first Verse menu then sets itself to "1". The second Verse menu sets itself to the last verse in the chapter (in this case, "31"). So if you press the Jump button, E-Bible will go to the book you've specified, the chapter you've specified, and it will get every verse from the verse in the first Verse menu to the verse in the second Verse menu. If the first verse is 1 and the second verse is the chapter's last verse, you'll get the entire chapter.

The bottom window in E-Bible is the search window. It is always open, so you can always conveniently search the Bible. To do a quick search, just type in the phrase you're looking for and click the "Search" button.

E-Bible searches the entire Bible by default, about 5-6 megabytes of text, so that can take quite a while. For quicker results, you can narrow your search range by selecting a start book and an end book from the pull-down menus. The smaller the range, the quicker your results will appear.

E-Bible's search is Case insensitive. That means "Jesus" and "jesus" will find the exact same things.

E-Bible looks for the exact string you type in, NOT the words. In other words, "man" will find "mandrake", "demand" and any other word that contains the string "man"

When your search is done, E-Bible will present you with a list of matches to your search term. Double-clicking on one of those matches will open the verse in the main window. You can view the rest of the chapter by clicking the "Whole Chapter" button.

There are many variants of Bible software, but none I've used have anything quite like E-Bible's "Copy Formatted" command.

For instance, consider this passage -- the first five verses of 2 Timothy Chapter 4, copied via the Clipboard and pasted here with no text cleanup:

1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.

This is less than ideal because:
• There's no tindication of where this passage comes from
• It will be necessary to edit the text to delete the verse numbers and the carriage returns
• There are no quotation marks around the verse

However, the same passage copied with "Copy Formatted" from the Edit menu (or Command+Option+C) pastes like this:

“ I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” (2 Timothy 4:22-5)

By using "Copy Formatted":
• The verse numbers and carriage returns are removed for you
• The passage is contained within quotation marks
• The book, chapter and verse range is automatically inserted at the end of the passage

In addition, E-Bible offers quick access to Strong's Hebrew and Greek Lexicon definitions of Bible words. Strong's Lexicon is a dictionary of Hebrew and Greek words that is tied to the words that make up the Bible. Since English grammar, construction, and syntax are substantially different from Hebrew and Greek, the translators of the English Bible were obliged to use judgment calls sometimes to supply the English word that most faithfully represented the original-language word. Strong's Lexicon allows the English reader access to the definitions of the original language words for comparitive study.

To access the Strong's Lexicon in E-Bible:

• Surf the Bible as you normally would
• When you find a verse you'd like to investigate further, hold down the Option key and double-click on the verse you want to explore
• A sheet will come down on top of your passage. The sheet will contain the verse you double-clicked on, and some of the words in the verse will be blue and underlined. Those words are the English words that have direct original language counterparts
• Simply click on an underlined word. Its original language definition will appear below it
• In the definitions, if you see a number in reference to another word, double-clicking on the number will bring up another sheet that will further explore that word.

Some often-used or otherwise very common words do not highlight, though they have original-language definitions. In these cases, either the word has no direct antecessor or it is a word that means exactly the same thing as the English word that represents it.

In my estimation, the "Copy Formatted" and Strong's Lexicon features put E-Bible head and shoulders above any other inexpensive searchable Bible text software that I've used. Very cool!

Printing is straightforward in E-Bible. Simply select "Print" from the File menu and you'll be presented with a print dialog box. Choose your printer and fire away

System requirements:
• Mac OSX 10.1 or higher

E-Bible is a Carbon application, designed to work on Mac OSX. It MAY work on Classic Macs with CarbonLib installed, but is not officially supported for that. I tried it in OS 9.1, and it crashed on startup. Lief is are developing a Classic companion to this program

E-Bible is $15 "moralityware." A free 30-day feature-unlimited trial lets you kick the tires and see if you want to keep E-Bible. If you can't afford the $15, go to http://www.conservatives.net/Software/Indigent/ let them know, and they will send a free registration code for you.

E-Bible is $15 shareware.

For more information, visit:
http://www.conservatives.net/

Re: Linux is user driven

From Wayne Folta

Charles,

You say that Linux is user-driven which is correct, but comparing the average Mac user to the average Linux user is like, well, comparing Apples and Oranges. The average Linux user is way more into the computer as a hobby in itself (hardware mods, programming, etc) than the average Mac user (say you). The Linux GUI is complicated and ugly precisely because it is created by programmers for programmers.

Hi Wayne;

I don't disagree. I've had Linux installed on my recently deceased WallStreet for more than a year. Never used it much. However, Linux distro developers like TerraSoft (Yellow Dog Linux) and SuSE are working hard to make Linux more user friendly. Even tech ignoramus me had no serious problems installing Linux on my PowerBook.

Terra Soft is also now offering Apple computers with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. As an Apple Authorized VAR, Terra Soft is able to provide custom configured stand-alone units or clusters while maintaining the full Apple warranty. Pre-installed systems boot directly to Yellow Dog Linux, saving time with installation and configuration.

Troy Vitullo, Internal Systems & Support Engineer for Terra Soft comments that: "This is something we have been looking forward to for a long time. It simply does not get any easier than this --press the power button and you've got Linux."

The following Apple computers are currently offered from the Terra Soft Store (http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/), with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed:
- Power Mac G4s
- iBooks
- G4 iMacs
- AirPort cards
- ... Xserves will be available soon

Charles

Swithcheroo! Review

From Kim Peacock

Charles,

I do not know to whom to address this so I am sending it to you. Would you please forward it to whomever?

I tried out Switcheroo and found it fine for what it does. However, I find LaunchBar and LiteSwitch X to be superior for what I like...using the mouse as little as possible. I also thought that they could set up the product for "true" toggling, i.e. using "Command+tab" to move through the appls, again without mousing.

I tried to send the developers my comments but their website "Contact" button did not work.

Best regards,
Kim Peacock

PS When are you coming by Drummondville Quebec for coffee?

Hi Kim;

I've forwarded your email to Carson Baker at HolyMac Software.

Thanks again for the kind invite. Regrettably, I can't make any promises in the foreseeable future.

Charles

OSX Browser Comparison

From Lucas C Peyatt

I Read Your Browser Comparison on Applelinks and I Have Tried All 7 Browsers and IE Is The Best So Far. I am Using DSL. I Tried Omniweb and it Kept “Unexpectidly Quiting” On Me.

The others were too slow. one thing I noticed IE won't show the page until all graphics are loaded. So your results using dial up would put IE slower than the others.

Specs Of My Mac:
iMac Summer 2001
640 MB Ram
Mac OS X Server 10.1.4
80 GB HD

Hi Lucas;

Browsers that insist on loading graphics before showing text are extremely annoying on dial-up, which is one reason I tend to use iCab a lot.

However, I timed all of the browsers until all the graphics were loaded and the "Stop" button grayed out, so the sequence in which the respective browsers loaded text and graphics did not affect the scoring. IE was just plain slowest on most of the test pages and slow on all of them.

I'm extremely surprised that Netscape 7.0, which proved the clear speed champion by a substantial margin in my tests, would be slower than IE on DSL, but I don't have DSL. Some 70 percent of Internet users are still on dial-up connections, where relative browser speed looms larger. All of the browsers are pretty fast on broadband by relative comparison.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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