Other Sites
It succeeds at that, opening PDF documents smartly.
The developer warns that large files will use lots of memory and may take a minute to render, but once rendered, they will be easy to view. I found that to be so with a 300+ page PDF I tried.
Whether the slight speed advantage makes PDFast worth using compared with OS X's own Preview utility is questionable. I very much missed Preview's page navigation thumbnails, and the incapacity to highlight and copy material from PDFs is a serious deficiency for my purposes.
However, if you need a lightweight, speedy, and free PDF viewing utility, this one takes only a minute or two to download, and is well worth a look.
PDF Viewer is donationware
For more information, visit:
http://www.pidog.com/PDFast/
MacSword 1.1.3 Bible Research And Study Tool Mini-Review Update
Speaking of speed, Applelinks reader Ben (BearyandBow) asked last week:
"Are you going to review MacSword 1.1.3 any time soon? The developer said he has fixed the stability and performance issues, although I never noticed any defects."
Neither had I, but the speed improvement with this latest 1.1.3 version of MacSword is really substantial, much more than one might expect from a tenth of a point numerical distinction. I've been using 1.1.3 for the past week, and it now starts up very smartly. It seems that the speed of searches, which I have criticized in the past, have also been speeded up.
New in this version:
• Fixed major crashing bug
• Vastly improved startup times
• New search option Ă‚— that allows you to search for Strong's numbers
• Improved rendering of verses on one line
• Drag and drop for bookmarks and find results, better supported
Like Ben, I hadn'texperienced any stability problems with precedng versions of MacSword, but it's nice to know that it's more solid than ever.
MacSword is a free & open-source application for Bible and resource materials developed specifically for OS X.
MacSword allows you to read and browse many different Bibles translations in different languages from Hebrew to Albanian. As well as reading devotionals, commentaries, dictionaries and lexicons, it also supports searching and advanced features such as Services so that you can access the Bible in any Services-savvy program.
MacSword uses the Sword project at http://www.crosswire.org/sword/ .This is an open source project whose purpose is to "to create an ever expanding software package for research and study of God and His Word". This provides the back-end functionality to handle the Bible texts and provide features such as searching.
Sword module Add-ins allow you to expand the functionality and your library of resources for your Sword-based software, including some two dozen different English language Bible or New Testament translations, which is one of the big advantages of MacSword. The program downloads with a King James Version module. One caveat is that most of the recent translations are not in the public domain, so while the modules exist, they are not available for public download.
Bible text modules that are available for download include:
The Apostles' Bible
A Conservative Version
American King James Version
Analytical-Literal Translation
American Standard Version (1901)
Bible in Basic English (1949/1964)
Bible in Worldwide English
The Common Edition: New Testament
Douay-Rheims American Edition (1899)
Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner Revision
Darby Bible (1889)
English Majority Text Version
GOD'S WORD Translation
Hebrew Names Version of the World English Bible
International Standard Version
Jewish Publication Society Old Testament
Green's Literal Translation
The Living Oracles NT
Green's Modern King James Version
Montgomery New Testament
James Murdock's Translation of the Syriac Peshitta
Revised King James New Testament
Restored Name King James Version
Revised Standard Version
Revised Webster Version (1833)
Twentieth Century New Testament
William Tyndale Bible (1525/1530)
World English Bible
Webster Bible
Weymouth NT (1912)
Young's Literal Translation (1898)
Abbott Illustrated New Testament
Downloadable Bible Commentaries include:
Barnes' New Testament Notes
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible
Darby Translation Notes
Family Bible Notes
Geneva Bible Translation Notes
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary
John Lightfoot Commentary
Luther's Commentary on Galatians
Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible
The People's New Testament
Personal Commentary
Robertson's Word Pictures
Scofield Reference Notes, 1917 Edition
Tischendorf's Spurious Passages of the GNT
C. H. Spurgeon's Treasury of David
The Fourfold Gospel and Commentary on Acts of Apostles
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
John Wesley's Notes on the Bible
Sermons on Gospel Themes by Charles G. Finney (1792-1875)
Heretics by Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Calvin's Institutes
Josephus: The Complete Works
The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee (1903-1972)
Orthodoxy by Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1628-1688)
The Practice of the Presence of God: The Best Rule of Holy Life by Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman, 1605-1691)
SWORD Module Add-ins also include:
Lexicons / Dictionaries
Glossaries
Daily Devotionals
General Books
Cult / Unorthodox / Questionable
A floater window allows you to select among modules stores in the program's Modules" folder:
The program includes the ability to display Bible text contiguously with verse references interpolated:
With each verse displayed individually:
Or with verse references omitted:
Or individual verses witholut numbers.
There is also an option to highlight the words of Jesus in red:
A Cocoa drawer, toggled from the toolbar, which is user-customizable:
The "Find" function which had been a weak point in MacSword, being relatively slow and without any configuration options (ie: limiting searches to just one book or testament) has been much improved in recent releases, with searches refinable using several pull-down menus containing search parameter selections. The speed varies considerably depending upon which translation you're using. The KJV had in earlier versions been excruciatingly poky, and it's now much faster. Searches are also faster in the RSV and other modern language translations, although still not up to the standard of the search engines in, say, BibleReader Free or BibleViewer.
I found navigation in MacSword to be slick and convenient using the pull-down menus in the user interface window.
System requirements:
MacSword should run on any computer with Mac OS X v10.2 with Safari 1.0 and later or with Mac OS X v10.2.7 and later
You must also have some text modules installed before it'll do anything.
There are over 200 modules in 50 languages that are all available from the Crosswire Bible Society. Including Bibles, commentaries, lexicons, dictionaries and devotionals.
You can get modules from:
http://www.crosswire.org/sword/modules/
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
MacSword is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.macsword.com/
Charles W. Moore
Tags: OSX Odyssey ď
(0) Trackbacks ď
