BIBLE for Sony Reader [Archive]

sartori

10-31-2006, 12:48 AM

I've just been playing around with converting a gutenberg version into pdf.

Take a look (it's only one chapter but should give you an idea).

The first page allows you to select the chapter using the joystick (only one is available so just click the joystick in)

This takes you to a verse selection page - again use the joystick to scroll up and down and click to select.

When viewing the verses you can use the next & prev page buttons or click the joystick which will take you back to the verse index.

Pressing the #1 button will take you back to the chapter index.

This would be a HUGE job to create - but it's one of things that once it's done it won't change.

Converting the gutenberg text into something usable is not too difficult (lots of seach and replace) but adding the links takes forever. It may be better to wait until sony releases the specs for the lrf file and try to create it in that.

Rob

Nightwing

10-31-2006, 02:22 AM

WOW.. Darn good job!

lint

10-31-2006, 11:16 AM

wow, very nice job. Although im sure SONY or some other company will tackle this at some point, if not (or if we want a translation not available) i know Id be willing to take certain books or chapters to work on. If we had many people just working on certain books it would get done much quicker.

-lint

hrbrmstr

10-31-2006, 08:07 PM

Hey folks...

For those of you looking for a daily devotional, are you Windows, OS X, or Linux/BSD?

I've got a script that uses wget/htmldoc to download and generate PDFs from The Upper Room (print devo page: http://www.upperroom.org/Devotional/devo_printer.asp?devo_date=10/31/2006, pretty page: http://www.upperroom.org/Devotional/) and Year of The Bible (http://yob.gospelcom.net/reading.php). I've attached samples. I want to add others, but 4 kids (one ~8mos) kinda cramps the development schedule. I also want to add auto-grabbing of the Bible verses in the Upper Room one, but I still keep my 'ol hardcover Bible with me, so it's just laziness @ this point.

I run the script in the morning to generate the current day's files, then copy to SD. (BTW: While the Reader doesn't do hierarchical navigation, I find having directories for "Books", "RSS", and "Devotionals" on the SD card helps *me* keep organized *:^)

I wouldn't mind hosting daily versions of these files for download, but I need to look at bandwidth stats for my own site and talk to both those sites (and any others I might want to use) about the whole HTML->PDF & re-distribution thing.

That's where the platform question comes in. Right now, I run the script on OS X and it pop's-em out all nice & simple. That same script would also work without change (probably, I can test in a VM) on Linux/BSD. I could make an "app" for Windows (very bare or no GUI due to time) to do the same if there's interest. It would probably use the cygwin dll and local (to the app) copies of wget & htmldoc.

Lemme know if anyone's interested and if there are more devotional sites you'd like to see added. I'm going for the simple, daily pages rather than covert entire ones from Gutenberg or www.ccel.org so that I can stay focused on that particular day and not have to worry about bookmarking/etc.

boB

proee

10-31-2006, 09:23 PM

Nice work Sartori. I agree with lint - if somebody doesn't come up with their own version soon, then we could distribute the work among multiple members here and have a each person do a few book. What is there like 66 books in the bible. I'll take Obadiah and 3rd John.

Also, if some publisher did decide to format for the reader then they could add a section on each page that would display commentary information on select verses.

Bob Russell

11-01-2006, 05:56 AM

Lemme know if anyone's interested and if there are more devotional sites you'd like to see added. I'm going for the simple, daily pages rather than covert entire ones from Gutenberg or www.ccel.org so that I can stay focused on that particular day and not have to worry about bookmarking/etc.Wow, this is incredible! I only looked at it on my desktop, but will load it on my Reader and take a look when I get a few minutes. I'm also going to hunt for some sites with a daily bit from Spurgeons Morning/Eve and Oswald Chambers and Upper Room devotionals, as well as an NIV or NKJV daily reading. I'm sure I can find most of those on the web, and it would be spectacular to have them on the Reader! Great work!

lint

11-01-2006, 10:50 AM

ive been converting a lot of spurgeon from spurgeon.org over to my reader. fantastic stuff!

-lint

Bob Russell

11-01-2006, 12:45 PM

I took a look on the Reader, and the print is very small. Is it possible to bump up the size significantly? Or do others like the tiny text?

NatCh

11-01-2006, 12:48 PM

I'm home with a cold today, so I finished up my processing of the World English Bible (http://ebible.org/) version.

From their site: The World English Bible (WEB) is a Public Domain (no copyright) Modern English translation of the Holy Bible, based on the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible first published in 1901, the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensa Old Testament, and the Greek Majority Text New Testament.

Basically they took the ASV and modernized its language (no thee's & thou's, etc.) It's a reasonably good version, though not a direct translation.

What I did, was run each book through WordPad (which stripped the double columns, and dropped the file size considerably), changed the font to Arial (my personal preference -- sorry you Serif Font lovers out there, but my ergonomics class prof told us that sans-serif fonts are the easiest to read :shrug: ), and bumped the size to 18 points. Then I used NotePad to manually add some metadata back in.

The results display agreeably enough for straight reading, but navigation is rather a pain in the sitter-downer (as expected). They're in file alpha order, and there is a sub dir with 'extra' books, some apocryphal, some just alternate translations, and I seem to remember a note from the translators ....

Anyway, I haven't processed the extras, but I include them out of respect for the folks who did the real work of making the text available in the first place. :smile:

hrbrmstr

11-01-2006, 02:42 PM

devos:

I'm hoping to make the script/scriptlet/app customizable. Later versions have the text @ 14pt (pretty readable). I'll post more after my (or during) vacation (wi-fi @ the campground - yay!).

Bibles:

w/r/t Bibles on the Reader...ccel.org has many of them in Theological Markup Language, an XML syntax specific to coding texts with scripture references or Bibles. You need to register to d/l, but they have many Bibles that are ready for processing from XML to whatever works best for the Reader.

Bob Russell

11-06-2006, 07:42 PM

Okay, here is my wishlist for the Bible and devotionals on the Reader:

* One Minute Bible, Ed. Kohlenberger (I've seen KJV, but NIV would be better)
This is key excerpts in daily readings. "The heart of the Bible
presented in 366 one minute readings."
* One Year Bible (Full NIV in daily readings, by Tyndale)
* One Year Bible Companion

* Morning and Evening: Spurgeon
* My Utmost for His Highest: Oswald Chambers
* Upper Room (as given in previous post)

I like 18-20pt on the Reader, but I can understand other people wanting smaller, and 16 small can be increased just fine with M/L sizes.

The first three are books that I suppose would just have to be added to the store by Sony. I suppose a PD Bible could be converted into a daily reading Bible using any Bible in a year reading plan. (Personally, I like the ones with OT/NT/Prov/Psalms each day for variety.) The devotionals seem to be achievable with some work, and would be really great to have on the Reader. Currently, I have the equivalent of the one-year Bible, and two of the devotionals on my Treo, which works well also, and has the added advantage of being with me at all times. But a Sony Reader version would be so nice aesthetically and easy on the eyes!

I haven't looked in detail at what has been done so far in this thread, but when I have time, I'll look at it and see if I can apply to the devotionals. Or maybe another of the tools that have been modified/created so far for the Reader.

frquixote

11-07-2006, 02:29 PM

I already have Spurgeon's Morning and Evening in Microsoft Word (one page per morning and one page per evening). I converted it to provide a clean text for eBook Studio. As I understand it, it would be a very simple matter to re-scale the text sizes and convert it to RTF. I also have Daily Strength for Daily Needs by Mary Wilder Tileston in the same format converted from Gutenberg plain text. Don't have the Word documents with me, but will post them when I get home this evening.

lint

11-07-2006, 04:08 PM

thanks frquixote, i look forward to those.

-lint

sic

11-10-2006, 03:30 PM

NatCh

11-10-2006, 03:33 PM

The copyright is on the translation.

Bob Russell

11-10-2006, 04:01 PM

frquixote

11-11-2006, 02:58 AM

Here are the promised Spurgeon's Morning and Evening and Tileston's Daily Strength for Daily Needs. I'm sorry that the Spurgeon's is broken into quarters, but there is a limit of 1MB per file on the upload.

elf

11-17-2006, 08:49 AM

Bob Russell

11-17-2006, 09:13 AM

Great news. I'm glad to see the Bible posted both because it's available now for the Reader (thanks elf!) and also because I had missed the previous Morning/Evening post by frquixote! Excellent stuff.

I think devotionals and daily Bible readings are the best use for the Reader with the Bible. Daily devotionals are self-evident how they would work.

But for the Bible, I would think there are two main ways to handle it...
1) The Bible as-is, to be read straight through front to back. Eventually a TOC for each book would be nice, and maybe even another TOC for each book by chapter. Might even be useful in church with that navigation.
Edit: Just noticed elf did a BBeB Bible with some navigation! Cool. I look fwd to trying out!
2) The Bible organized by your favorite reading plan.

This second alternative is the one that interests me the most. One Year Bible, for example, is available at eReader but only for a modern language translation as opposed to the more common: NIV, NASB, NKJV, KJV, AMP. I'd love to see a version of the OYB in one of the top translations, especially NIV or NASB.

KJV based on a daily reading plan should be pretty straightforward and copyright-free. Personally I like the plans that have OT/NT/Ps/Pr each day, and move through passages consecutively. Unfortunately, like a lot of people, I can't always tell what the words mean. Because of the age of the KJV, some of the language is old and incomprehensible, and others are misleading because they have a different meaning than the obvious modern interpretation of a word. (No, I'm not ripping that translation... let's not get into that here. I really like it, it's just harder for me to understand.)

Good news is that there is something called the Modern KJV that I think is copyright-free. It's included in the excellent and free e-sword software for example.

While we could each potentially create our own NIV daily reading Bible for personal use if we have already bought an electronic Bible on the desktop (not sure what the copyright rules would be for that, even), we definitely couldn't start sharing it. So what I'm suggesting is that someone creates a daily reading Bible with MKJV as a reasonable compromise until Sony Connect can get hold of an NIV One Year Bible, or equivalent.

Any thoughts? Any public domain or freely usable daily reading plans that you would suggest?

elf

11-17-2006, 09:23 AM

Hi Bob,

They way i converted the bible was by writing a perl script to rip the WEB and put it back together with links to books/chapters. To change my script to output the data differently (eg for a "reading a day" format) would be fairly straightforward.

If you could define a methodology for me, I'll do the work and post a daily reading bible. What i need is a structure to work with, like maybe:

one verse from a book, a psalm, and a proverbs every day, reading straight through from front to back.

would that work? If not, give me an example of something that would and I'll see what I can do.

Elf

Bob Russell

11-17-2006, 09:31 AM

I've created my own daily reading plan in the past, and learned that you can't just take a certain number of chapters or verses for each day. It really needs to be broken down according to the natural breaking points or it doesn't work very well for a reading experience.

If I or someone else can come up with a list of scriptures for each day, would that be practical? Is there a format that would make it easier for you?

Also, is this a WEB Bible only thing, or can it be applied to other translations also?

elf

11-17-2006, 09:34 AM

I'll think about how best to do this, I was assuming a "system" of some sorts might work, but if it wont break naturally according to a formula then it might not work.

I can modify my script to any version I'd think, but I'd only really be willing to do it for a freely available version - no NIV etc. :)

Elf

Bob Russell

11-17-2006, 09:39 AM

I'll think about it some more also.

I might be able to come up with a # of chapters per day for each of OT/NT/Ps and a # of verses from Pr for each day. It wouldn't be perfect -- Ps 119 being the obvious example because it's really long, but it might work out pretty good.

Would that sort of breakdown be practical?

elf

11-17-2006, 09:45 AM

Yeah, that would be great. I could add a line that if chapter less than some size, put in 2 chapters, or if greater than certain size, chop in half.

Do you know what versions of the bible are available for free? You mentioned a modern KJV, what about asv/nasb etc? Any ideas how they compare to the WEB?

Bob Russell

11-17-2006, 10:09 AM

I'll try to come up with something. Someone else help us out if you have a moment. It's simply a matter of counting the number of chapters OT/NT and verses in Prov, then dividing by 365. No need to worry about leap years. If Prov has less than 365 verses, it's okay to run out before the end of the year. If it has less than 182 verses, then we can cycle twice, but I don't think it's that short.

Come to think of it, this info might already be available with a Google search. I'll try that first when I get a chance.

As far as translations, I'm not sure, but I have the impression that asv is close to the official Catholic translation, but I don't know if it includes all the extra books.

NASB/NKJV/NIV/MSG are all copyrighted. Modern KJV seems similar to NKJV but other than reading it on my PPC because it was free with Pocket e-sword, I don't know more about it. I did like it, but probably should do more research on it before committing too much time to it. Anyone else know what people think of MKJV? (Again, not trying to get into a fight over translations. That can be a sensitive subject, and belongs in a different forum. Just trying to get a feel for what the translation is like.)

frquixote

11-17-2006, 04:05 PM

If you like the Authorized Version (King James, including Apocrypha), but struggle with the archaic words, you might want to check out the Third Millenium Bible. The traditional language is maintained, so there is that familiarity, but the archaic words are updated.

The Third Millenium Bible is already available on Crosswalk.com and pointers to versions that run under Bible With You & Bible Concordance With You by GMPSoft as well as on BibleReader from Olive Tree Bible Software (the one I use) can be found at the Third Millenium Bible website:

http://www.tmbible.com/

It is also available in traditional paper editions with a variety of bindings.

Their copyright notice shows tremendous flexibility (you can make your own copies, paper and electronic, but you can't sell them) ... see the website.

The usual disclaimers apply ... I am merely a very satisified user.

When it comes to meaningful Lectionaries, my personal experience has been that none beats the Lectionary from the Book of Common Prayer (1928, Episcopal) or Book of Common Prayer (1662, Church of England). The former has personally served me well for over fifty years because an effort was made by the compilers to relate the Psalm and the Old Testament and New Testament lessons. Further, the selections are tied to the rhythm of the Liturgical Year used by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans and many others.

NatCh

11-17-2006, 04:36 PM

Have completed a BBeB version of the World English Bible.I've just been playing with it and it's a massive improvement over what I had before! Thank you, elf!

Regarding the pages full of links, I discovered one thing that will help some -- if you click the jogstick up on the first link on a page, it'll go to the last link on that page. That way you don't have to click though more than half the links on a given page, so only 2.5 million to get to the middle of Deut. :grin:

Bob Russell

11-17-2006, 07:15 PM

Okay, here's my conundrum for doing the Daily Bible Readings, courtesy of the statistics at http://www.marshcommentary.com/stats/...

Relevant stats are:
* Total OT chapters (minus Ps & Pr) = 929 - 150 - 31 = 748
* Total chapters in Ps = 150
* Total verses in Pr = 915
* Total NT chapters = 260

Per day OT = 748/365 (about 2.05)
Per day NT = 260/365 (about 0.71)

So dividing them up in 365 pieces is not so easy to do without causing artificial breaks (Pr, Ps, NT especially), or some kind of repeating pattern of skipping three out of ten days (e.g. for NT again).

My conclusion is that it's probably not the best way to break it up by fixed rules after all.

Anyone have any clever solutions I missed?

Note: If someone wants to see stats for the Catholic version of the Bible (with additional canonical books), they can find the equivalent info at http://www.catholic-resources.org/Bible/OT-Statistics-NAB.htm and http://www.catholic-resources.org/Bible/NT-Statistics-Greek.htm

sartori

11-17-2006, 07:23 PM

Bob,

http://ebible.org/kjv/ has a reading plan already set up - not sure if this is what you have in mind.

Sartori

dureyes

12-01-2006, 11:42 PM

Hadrien

12-02-2006, 09:48 AM

It should be possible to create something quite good looking and with a usefull table of contents using LaTeX + hyperef.

No table of contents = useless in the case of a Bible

Latemarch

12-08-2006, 01:23 PM

The best approach to navigating the Bible will be to use the buttons on the Reader.

Dividing the bible into 9 groups of books, each book next selected by another number key and then into groups of chapters in the longer books or just by selecting a chapter by number key in the shorter books.

Your only a few key strokes away from any chapter which makes navigating a breeze.

RWood

12-08-2006, 03:02 PM

Now all we need is a program to provide the navigation interface and easy formatting to the Sony file standard.

HarryT

12-09-2006, 03:00 AM

Latemarch

12-11-2006, 09:26 AM

Can you elaborate on how this can be achieved?

It'll take a significant software kluge.
Currently the 0 thru 9 buttons only navigate by % thru a book that is currently open. They only "navigate" on the meta-menus.

The Table of Contents (a meta-menu) can be navigated with the 0-9 keys but does not appear to have multiple levels which is what's going to be required for my scheme to work. That would probably be the best place to modify the software.

Example.......

TOC first page

1key Gen Exo Lev Num Deu
2key Josh Judg Ruth 1Sam 2Sam 1Kng 2Kng
etc

Hit the 1key and you get a TOC second page

1key Gen
2key Exo
3key Lev
etc

Hit the 2key and you get a TOC third page

1key Ch 1-9
2key Ch 10-19
3key Ch 20-29
4key Ch 30-39
etc

Anyway you get the drift. Since the reader remembers keystrokes even though it hasn't updated the page you could get pretty good at getting somewhere with a 4-2-5-8 (hypothetical example) set of keystrokes taking you all the way to the chapter level.

Of course a better solution would be to have a USB keyboard and a search function :D

Yaholo

12-21-2006, 09:47 PM

I have been working on making my own Bible for the Reader for some time. It is very tedious, but possible. If someone out there did it, I would certainly pay for it.

Here is what I have done on my own and it works very well: I use NeoOffice on my Mac (OpenOffice for PC) and then combine the section and hyperlink tools. I put a section in the document that links to a book, chapter, or verse then use create an internal hyperlink to a menu item.

In the end I fit all the books of the Bible onto one page. When you click a book, it takes you to a menu of chapters, then to a menu of verses. This makes a Bible that is completely navigable on the Sony Reader. Book -> Chapter -> Verse -> the Click eReader Bible.

The document is laid out with page 1 of each book of the bible being the chapter menu, and at the beginning of each chapter being a verse menu. The links hold up pretty well when I export to PDF. But I have only tried it on a Mac. I have used this technique on other books too like "The Imitation of Christ" to allow me to jump to each meditation.

The hard part that you basically have to make a hyperlink for each verse in the Bible.... so I will probably only go as far as Book and Chapter. However, I present this idea in the hopes that someone might just do it. Like I said, I would pay for it.

NatCh

12-21-2006, 10:09 PM

It sounds like you might be interested in post #34 (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=47714&postcount=34) above, Yaholo. :nice:

Yaholo

12-24-2006, 10:03 PM

Hi Guys,

Have completed a BBeB version of the World English Bible.

The bookname -> chapter number menu works ok, but I am not totally happy with it - navigating to Deut book 20 for example takes 5 million clicks. I have an idea on how to improve it, and will hopefully have a version 2 up soon. Try it out, and let me know if there are any broken chapters/links!

Any comments on how to improve the navigation system might help my fine tune V2.

Enjoy!
Elf

After missing this, (sorry), I will say this is very close to what I am looking for.

I have a thought... there is another free bible out there called the NET Bible at www.bible.org

On that page is a HTML frame version of the bible. Is there anything that will take that HTML version and make a PDF out of it?

GEBSEWS

12-24-2006, 11:15 PM

For the past week or so I've been refomatting a KJV Bible into PDF format. The first try was too small to read.

I'm almost finished with the chapters. It will be too much work to try to make links to each verse.

These are the steps I took and the text is very easy to read in pdf format even on the smallest setting in the reader.

I opened the document in MS Word then changed the font for the entire bible to 26 points BOLD, Helsinki font. I added chapter headings. Then converted the document to pdf using Adobe Acrobat vs 8 professional.

Once converted, opened in Acrobat then added Bookmarks for each book of the Bible then "sub" bookmarks for each chapter in each book. These bookmarks will be a table of contents in the reader.

Once loaded into the reader you choose a book of the Bible in the table of contents and then choose a chapter in the "sub" table of contents. I'm not sure how many levels of table of contents you can create but the two levels here work. You still have to page over to a particular verse but is easier than a paper Bible. I've still got a few more bookmarks to add and I'll be finished. I do not mind sharing the file. I am not sure what the finished file size will be.

Viq

02-05-2007, 05:58 PM

Has there been any update on this specific content? I am looking to purchase a reader almost exclusively for technical documents (pdf and in some POOR cases rtf) but would LOVE to have the bible available as well.

EatingPie

04-14-2007, 09:52 AM

Bump.

Hi Bob,

They way i converted the bible was by writing a perl script to rip the WEB and put it back together with links to books/chapters. To change my script to output the data differently (eg for a "reading a day" format) would be fairly straightforward.

If you could define a methodology for me, I'll do the work and post a daily reading bible. What i need is a structure to work with, like maybe:

one verse from a book, a psalm, and a proverbs every day, reading straight through from front to back.

would that work? If not, give me an example of something that would and I'll see what I can do.

Elf

Can you post your Perl Script by any chance?

I'm looking for any resource in languages I know (seems like the best tool so far is python-based, and I haven't had the time yet to learn python... beyond the obvious).

Another reason for the bump... The Bible in Post #34 is great! I was actually going to do EXACTLY this as a project, but you beat me to the punch. The only issue I have is the lack of "curly-quotes." I have an incredibly simple algorithm for quote-conversion... it's not perfect but it's about 95%. I don't know of any tool that generates curly-quotes -- except my modified makelrf3.

-Pie

mheflin

05-03-2007, 10:45 AM

Great Job!!!!!!!!!!

I have purchased NASB in the Microsoft Reader LIT format. Is there a way to convert it the same way you have done the conversion bible.BBeB?

Thanks

RWood

05-03-2007, 02:04 PM

Try BookDesigner.

EatingPie

05-03-2007, 02:23 PM

mheflin

05-04-2007, 10:08 AM

Does the NASB in LIT format have paragraphs? The few electronic NIV Bibles I've seen have line-breaks at each verse. Very annoying, and astoundingly unreadable on the Reader. Also, does CLIT work on your NASB, and where did you get it?? :)

The post #34 bible is pretty good. It has a main TOC page listing all the books. These link to a TOC page for the specific book, and there you select which chapter you want. It has paragraphs, and super-scripted verse numbers. The biggest problem is that it lacks a header to tell you what book you're on (or what chapter, for that matter) so it's easy to get lost.

I developed my program pielrf with the target of converting a Bible. It's feature-complete for regular books (version 1.2, soon to be posted and officially announced) but needs one more addition for it to work on a Bible (a <subchapter> tag). I may break off a totally different version to do this.

-Pie
The text appears to break return on each verse but not an extra space. There are sections (with headers inserted). Here is an example:

The Flight to Egypt

13 Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord *appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him."
14 So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt.
15 He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON."

Herod Slaughters Babies

16 Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to

I purchased it at http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/126934-ebook.htm for $9.99.

I tried CLIT and it did not work for me --- could be user error. I also tried ABC Amber LIT Converter.

I look forward to seeing your next version. Thanks for the help.

mheflin

05-04-2007, 02:53 PM

You just sent an message to me--but my pop up blocker did away with it. Would you try again.

NatCh

05-04-2007, 03:15 PM

You can get to your messages by clicking on the "Control Panel" link toward the top of the page (in the bar right under the MobileRead graphic), mheflin. There's a "Private Messages" section in the left hand column of the control panel. :nice:

JSWolf

05-05-2007, 12:19 AM

The text appears to break return on each verse but not an extra space. There are sections (with headers inserted). Here is an example:

The Flight to Egypt

13 Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord *appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him."
14 So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt.
15 He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "OUT OF EGYPT I CALLED MY SON."

Herod Slaughters Babies

16 Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to

I purchased it at http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/126934-ebook.htm for $9.99.

I tried CLIT and it did not work for me --- could be user error. I also tried ABC Amber LIT Converter.

I look forward to seeing your next version. Thanks for the help.
When you used CLIT, did you first run ReaderKeyRecoveryTool.exe? That gets the key needed for CLIT to remove the DRM. Aftert hat, CLIT can remove the DRM.

HarryT

05-05-2007, 12:32 AM

You just sent an message to me--but my pop up blocker did away with it. Would you try again.

That "pop-up" is just a notification that you have a message. As Nat say, you can read your messages at any time from the "User Control Panel". If you look at the links in the very top right corner of any page of this site (where it says "FrontPage", "Gallery", etc) you'll probably find there's a new link appeared saying "1 unread message" or something similar. You can also click that to read the message.

mheflin

05-05-2007, 04:29 PM

When you used CLIT, did you first run ReaderKeyRecoveryTool.exe? That gets the key needed for CLIT to remove the DRM. Aftert hat, CLIT can remove the DRM.
I don't believe I did run the ReaderKeyRecoveryTool.exe.

EatingPie

05-06-2007, 12:39 PM

Unfortunately, the NASB mheflin has is broken at verses, not at paragraphs. Is there an NASB or NIV with actual paragraphs?

My tool, pielrf (Mac OS X version done, just working on simplified python installation) isn't quite ready to attack a Bible... As I said, I'll probably fork off a Bible version separately. And I'm not sure what to do about paragraph headings ("The Flight to Egypt")... so, we'll see.

-Pie

NatCh

05-06-2007, 01:00 PM

Could you run it through a Word macro to re-paragraphicate it, perhaps?

EatingPie

05-06-2007, 08:32 PM

Well, the problem is, there's no indication of paragraphs at all, at least from the given example.

The header could be used (any line not starting with a verse number) to delineate a section, but a section is not the same as a paragraph. Like if we look at the Beatitudes, the section would be titled "The Beatitudes" and every paragraph would (likely) begin with a "Blessed are the so and so." Some of these Blessed-ares span several verses, but there's no indication where the paragraph ends... so you'd end up with "The Beatitudes" and one HUGE paragraph after that.

-Pie

NatCh

05-06-2007, 10:27 PM

Ah, I was thinking more in terms of just taking out paragraphs after each verse ... that is just a bit more complex than I was imagining. :sad:

HarryT

05-07-2007, 02:16 AM

Would it take that long to put in the paragraph breaks manually?

The NT, if you were to do that separately, is not a particularly long book. It would be no more work to manually "tidy it up" than I've done in manually reformatting some of the books I've done - you could probably do it in a few hours. Just do a quick visual scan of each page of a printed version and add a paragraph break where needed.

The OT would be a much bigger challenge, I agree, but again "do-able", especially if several people were to tackle the job.

NatCh

05-07-2007, 08:35 AM

The unfortunate thing there is that the NASB translation is still under copyright, so we can't really share our work. :sad:

EatingPie

05-07-2007, 12:16 PM

Would it take that long to put in the paragraph breaks manually?

The NT, if you were to do that separately, is not a particularly long book...

Not a particularly long book... in relation to the whole Bible! But in relation to the majority of books published today? I'd call it a very long book. Especially if was charged with re-paragraphing the darned thing!

The solution is simple, NASB/NIV need to release electronic versions with paragraphs. Their print versions have them. I'm not sure why they think people prefer the e-book version to NOT have them. E-Books are still for PEOPLE to read, not COMPUTERS, after all!

The absolute worse Bible I've ever seen in this regard is Gutenberg's "New EText of Bible" KJV 1.3... download for a laugh, becuase it sure as heck ain't good for anything else! (Unless you're a computer.)

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext92/bible13.txt

Once again, the ebible.org version does have the paragraphs in the LRF version. That's one of its major strengths.

-Pie

dhbailey

05-07-2007, 03:47 PM

I've gone to that site a couple of times and can find no link for an LRF version of the bible on their web-site.

Could you please post a link to a specific page?

Thanks!

edbro

07-20-2007, 06:31 PM

I have seen the NIV Bible in MSLit format. I would like to purchase it if I thought I could convert it to lrf. But, I'm afraid that I would lose some functionality if I do. Is this fear founded? Has anybody tried converting a commercial version of the Bible from another format?

cjschmidt

10-09-2007, 10:57 AM

I purchased the NIV Bible from the Connect Store a few days ago and I'm pretty angry. The real TOC just links to another TOC that must be navigated with the d-pad/joystick. Footnotes and font size can take a few minutes to access/adjust. Everything is unbearably slow. The thing is useless.

I had hoped for something like the Sony Reader manual - choose a section, sub-section, etc with the numbered buttons to the side.

Is this just a problem with books this large or are the publishers (whoever mastered the Reader file) lazy?

Don't buy it! I want my money back!

JSWolf

10-09-2007, 11:04 AM

I can't speak for all Connect books, but the one's I've purchased have the external ToC linking to an internal ToC inside the book with an external entry of Table of Contents. As for it being slow to change font sizes, it could be that because the reader has to do the work and the bible is so large, that it's just slow. But once you get the size you want, you need not worry about that. As for why footnotes as slow, I cannot guess.

cjschmidt

10-09-2007, 12:04 PM

The Sony Connect Store now carries a NIV translation, but it's a joke.
The Reader TOC just points you to the "Table of Contents" which is a long (and slow loading) list of links that must be (slowly) navigated with the d-pad/joystick. Chapters are listed on the first page of each book and must be navigated the same way. Footnotes lock up the device for almost 5 minutes just to display a single sentence.

Even if the book is so huge that it can't load quickly, I don't understand why the TOC isn't using the built in system. The Reader manual even features sub-categories, which would be perfect for this use.

Don't buy it!

kovidgoyal

10-09-2007, 12:19 PM

The LRF format doesn't have support for multi-level TOCs (an inexplicable oversight on SONY's part). The SONY OG is a PDF.

cottonball

10-09-2007, 04:21 PM

I purchased the NIV Bible from the Connect Store a few days ago and I'm pretty angry. The real TOC just links to another TOC that must be navigated with the d-pad/joystick. Footnotes and font size can take a few minutes to access/adjust. Everything is unbearably slow. The thing is useless.

How does one navigate the footnotes? I can't for the life of me figure it out (and the Reader documentation was no help)...

Thanks!

cjschmidt

10-09-2007, 05:22 PM

The reference will be "highlighted" - just click the button/joystick and press left/right.

cottonball

10-09-2007, 06:02 PM

That works for the TOC (including the mini-TOC's preceding each book in the Bible), but not the teeny footnotes embedded in the text itself - at least not for me...

ctennenh

11-11-2007, 02:03 PM

Deputy-Dawg

12-21-2007, 11:25 PM

As a Latin Rite Roman Catholic Deacon I have long been disappointed in the lack of an authorized translation of the bible in ebook format. Yes, Olivetree has the NAB for palm devices and some other pda type devices but there is no generally available ebook format of the bible available. That is with two notable exceptions. Both the NCCB and the Vatican maintain on the web the NAB. This is all well and good if you have access to the Web when you need to study the bible but this is obviously a limited solution. Add into that the fact that I spend three 5 hour mornings each week on hemodialysis an the ability to study then would be a blessing.

Reading while on hemo is difficult in that most of us have our "access" in one of our arms and that severally limits the use of that arm (some of us more than others, I, for example, can do nothing with that arm - hold a book - turn pages - the like). So I was hoping that the NIV in ebook format would prove to be a useful book. It is a very competent translation and if it had the deuterocanonical books it would be at least adequate to my needs). In any event I was prepared to live with it until I found just how bad the navigation in it was.

Necessity being the mother of invention I downloaded all of the files that made up the NAB on the Vatican website. I edited out the rather strange background that they used. I set all of the links in the documents to point to the text pages (rather than the ones for the concordance as including the concordance would simply made the final document to large - or at least so I think) and I reformatted the text into a text format more consistent with the display characteristics of the Sony PRS 505 (I got one a week ago last Wed). I then used Adobe Acrobat to convert the HTML files into one large PDF document. I finally created a book mark for every chapter in the bible. These book marks were organized by books and the books by sections of the bible. For example i have "The Pentateuch" which contains "Genesis", Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy; and I have "The Gospels" which contains "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke" and "John". The document was created on a "sheet" that was set up as 4.5 X 6.0 inches. Each chapter has at is beginning and end two buttons labeled "Previous" and "Next" which link to the preceding and following chapters - or document in the bible.

Finally there are links from numbered entries the the bible to corresponding foot notes and back. There are also links for scripture references to the refered scripture. Surprisingly enough at all works. and the better news is that all of the book and chapter bookmarks link in a hierarchical fashion to the numbered buttons on the PRS505 making it fairly easy to navigate the bible. Finally the access time to the volume (which is about 43 Mb) is reasonably quick after an initial 30 second loading time when it is first accessed. The menus are quite responsive so long as you limit their size to some 50 to 60 entries (Psalms had to be broken up into 3 groups (1 - 50; 51 - 100 and 100 -150).

I have prepared a skeletonized version of the bible that shows how the books and chapters are accessed. I have included Genesis Chapter 21; Numbers Chapters 23 and 24 and the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 2 to demonstrate the various internal linking of the files. To try them out you have to navigate to the foot notes of Numbers Chapter 24. Finally there appears to be limitation to the resolution of links in the PDF reader on the PRS505 that limits the links of foot notes within a given chapter to the page on which the footnote occurs and intra chapter links to the chapter in which the subject verse occurs.

The skeletonized file is 29 mb in size (those dead links I guess) and do contain the afore mentioned chapters which are subject to copy right. But if the moderators agree that "fair use" would permit the posting of such limited amounts of a copyrighted text and the 29Mb does not bother them, and if you would like I will upload it.

DoctorBri

12-22-2007, 09:56 PM

Has anyone had any luck converting a commercial electronic bible (NIV or The Message) to something usable on the reader? I'd be willing to buy something in html or pdf if I could convert it with something like pdflrf or Kovid's tools in libprs500.

I'm post-call and wiped out, so read my thread (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16901) on converting the ESV to pdf. I've got a 2 week break now, so I'm hoping to work on this some more.

Finn Kerr

12-26-2007, 09:59 PM

I don't know if this has been suggested yet or not but for getting quickly to verses, chapters, etc. the table of contents can be several layers deep like first there's two options New or Old Testament, then the different books, then chapters, then topics ("Feeding the Five Thousand (Verses X to Y)", "The Lukewarm Church (Verses A to B)", etc.) and from there you would be able to pick which verse in specific

VikingDave

12-26-2007, 10:20 PM

How? ... for that matter, can someone give me clarification on how to set up TOC versus just links within the document (via html tags)?

Finn Kerr

12-27-2007, 04:31 PM

The User Guide that comes with the Reader is an example of how it looks. I don't know exactly how it's done but maybe by studying the User Guide someone can figure out how to do this...

VikingDave

12-27-2007, 11:02 PM

In the meantime, I have been as frustrated as everyone else in getting a Bible that one can quickly navigate in church. Using this in church, for sermons and Bible studies is an important aspect of having the Bible on the Reader.

So I spent a good part of this week creating a KJV solution. It's not perfect, but certainly has proven to be an improvement when it comes to navigating Scriptures in church. I've separated it into 9 separate books in the same collection. That way, there is another layer to the TOC (really just collection choices). Plus, the smaller size of the individual books makes for faster formatting (provided the preacher doesn't jump around passages too much). With the Collection giving nine choices and then the TOC giving up to 10 books of the Bible as needed, I've then added normal links for grouped chapter jumping and then individual chapter jumps. In the end, it makes for a pretty quick navigation if you just use the joystick & button without waiting for the screen to refresh.

I'm posting here as I know someone else will find this useful. Try it out and let me know what you think.

Lilly

12-28-2007, 12:48 AM

It looks great; you did a good job. I was able to navigate quickly through it on my computer. I will try it on the reader tomorrow ad give you more feedback!:thanks:

GatorDeb

12-28-2007, 01:54 AM

I was browsing through an eReader store and there was a Bible pack for $20 (one of the reviews said it was good but that they wouldn't spend the money if they had to do it again). I can't find it again :( I want it because it takes tens and tens of books that offer background info, explanations, additional resources for The Bible - all linked. All of the books are PD but the linkage for me is worth the $20. Help me find it again? Thanks! :)

VikingDave

01-01-2008, 04:40 PM

kusumo

01-13-2008, 09:26 AM

Has anyone found the KJV Bible that I posted useful? I ask because it seemed to do the trick for me, but I'd work on it some more if others had suggestions. Also, I'd be willing to do the same for other versions - if I was supplied the text and as long as I wouldn't be infringing any copyrights. Let me know. This forum has been a big help to me and any way I can give back, I will.

VikingDave, nice work. Kinda like it!
The only problem is, since i'm pretty new to bible, I need to remember that Proverbs is withing the Psalm & Songs of Solomons file... :p
So my personal opinion is that splitting file per each book is better idea.

I recently bought NIV in LIT format but I don't how to format it for the reader.. :( If only someone could help...

VikingDave

01-14-2008, 12:21 PM

VikingDave, nice work. Kinda like it!
The only problem is, since i'm pretty new to bible, I need to remember that Proverbs is withing the Psalm & Songs of Solomons file... :p
So my personal opinion is that splitting file per each book is better idea.

My thought in doing it this way was that it needed to be split for easier navigation, but splitting it into 66 books would be too unruly. I tried to segregate it so that the highest number of menu choices would be 10 so that it would fit nicely onto one TOC list.

I recently bought NIV in LIT format but I don't how to format it for the reader.. :( If only someone could help...

I would be willing to look at the NIV in lit format to see what could be done with it, but I just have some apprehension in doing anything with it because of the NIV copyright. I am not sure of the ethical or legal implications in just re-formatting something to make it easier to use.

HarryT

01-17-2008, 03:57 AM

diablo9

01-23-2008, 11:25 AM

My thought in doing it this way was that it needed to be split for easier navigation, but splitting it into 66 books would be too unruly. I tried to segregate it so that the highest number of menu choices would be 10 so that it would fit nicely onto one TOC list.

I would be willing to look at the NIV in lit format to see what could be done with it, but I just have some apprehension in doing anything with it because of the NIV copyright. I am not sure of the ethical or legal implications in just re-formatting something to make it easier to use.

Hi, VikingDave,
Just want let you know that I absolutely love your KJV BIBLE. I used to spend $1.99 on Connect Store to buy a KJV. But it was full of mis-spelling and missing spaces. "the" becomes "he". "the morning" becomes "themorning" Your version is much better than that commercial version!
When it comes to splitting books. I actually PREFER to have a one consolidated version with all 66 books in it. Now I have all 9 parts displayed in the book list. And because my 500 displays meta info instead of file names of lrf, they were all displayed "KJV Bible XXXXX XXXXX" and it doesn't start from Genesis but in alphabetic order. :eek: But I manually edited meta info and put 01, 02 in it. Now everything is fine and in order. :2thumbsup That's why I still prefer one consolidated version.
Anyway, thank you very much for the KJV. I love it! :thumbsup:

KDawg

01-23-2008, 11:42 AM

VikingDave,

I love your KJV as well. I too bought the Connect Store KJV and disliked the formatting.

I would like to have a World English Bible formatted like your KJV. A WEB has been posted here but I don't like the formatting - large fonts, large margins, and no footers showing the current Book. The WEB is Public Domain and available at ebible.org. It's a bit more Evangelical-leaning that the NIV, as I understand it, but I've come to prefer the WEB to the KJV.

Thanks for your efforts. I read your KJV every week. For those looking for some good supporting material I purchased Amy-Jill Levine's The Misunderstood Jew at the Connect Store and am enjoying it immensely. It's about understanding Jesus' message through the context of what it meant for him to be a Jew at his time. My uncle-in-law, a Catholic Priest (I'm sort of a Christian free agent/agnostic), put me onto Levine as a lecturer and she's an even better writer.