Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ssimmons@unix.cie.rpi.edu (Stephen Simmons) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: online Bibles Message-ID: Date: 16 Aug 90 15:59:55 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: CIE, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY Lines: 56 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu [There have been a couple of comments about features on computerized Bibles. cms complained >any rate, I followed up to comment: Whenever I use the search option on my >online text, it doesn't separate them out into book-divisions, making it >difficult for me to determine which section of the Bible I've retrieved this >gem; I'm sure I just have lousy software. So I often resort to Eerdman's. --clh] Wow, it's amazing how critical we get of software until we realize what constraints others work under...The program that I use is available on most microcomputers is The Word Processor, from Bible Research Systems. I use the Mac version, and I must say, they don't seem to have a good grasp of the Macintosh interface yet. But anyway, you can: <> search the Bible or a range of verses for a word or phrase <> build an index to all the occurences in the Bible or a range of a particular "expression" This feature is very much like a online concordance. <> copy verses or parts of verses into the clipboard <> edit windows for putting together groups of verses, editing, etc. An expression is not nearly quite so powerful as Unix's regular expressions. Basically, you can enter up to 32 words/phrases and ask for all verses that contain any of those phrases or all verses that contain all of them. Some wildcarding capabilities are possible. The program is available in segments: (1) The (either KJV or NIV; both are extra; online Bible, which costs (gasp!) $199 (2) The indexor (the feature above to build an index) (3) The verse typist (I don't have access to this; it supposedly automates the process of copying verses into other programs) (4) The commentator (I don't have this either; it supposedly allows you to add your own comments to the Bible) (5) The transliterator (I don't have this either; it supposedly has the Strong's Concordance built in, which has a number associated with each word in the Bible; this number corresponds to the Hebrew or Greek word in the original text, and you can use the number to quickly look up the word in Strong's Lexicon, which may (I don't remember) be online too). I don't know how much the additional segments cost. It's fast too, as it maintains an index of the Bible too. (About 1 to 2 minutes to bulid an index for any given word or phrase, if you don't use wildcards (Mac II)). To me, this program is "indispensible." But, to be honest, there are some (in my opinion) bizarre limitations: you can copy the text of all the verses in an index to the printer, but you cannot copy the text of all the verses in an index to the clipboard with one copy! (You can get around this with MacroMaker, but still...) --Stephen Simmons