The best Bible for your Kindle

[osnova]

Originally Posted by BarryTX

Congratulations on a fine effort, I have purchased a copy. I don't know if the DVJ method would be considered 'proprietary intellectual property' or not, but if so perhaps it would be worth your contacting Zondervan and other e-bible publishers to discuss licensing the technique. I would like to see Zondervan's NIV with this capability. If the method isn't a true proprietary IP, is it something that you would consider teaching others to utilize when making other reference books on the Kindle?

This type of stuff can be protected either by a patent or trade secret. Trade secret will not work in this case because it is easy to figure out once you have my book. I have not filed for a patent and am not planning to. So, this technique is free for anybody to use if they figure out how it works.

Yesterday, I have signed an agreement with copyright holders for the NET Bible to convert their Bible into Kindle format with DVJ. I am working on it right now. I may approach others and see if they are interested in having me do the same with their translations. I also plan to "Kindlize" the WEB, and some foreign language Bibles that are in Public Domain.

At this time, I do not want to give away all my secrets for free but I can't and don't prevent others from doing something similar.

By the way, I have come up with some improvements to DVJ. So, the NET Bible will have a new version of it which should be even faster and look even better.

[bloovis]

I looked at the sample in the Calibre ebook viewer, and it appears that the Direct Jump feature is implemented with invisible text at the beginning of each verse. That's the reason why each verse is indented. You can see the invisible text in Calibre by doing a search (it highlights the found text) or doing a click-and-sweep with the mouse over the blank space before each verse.

I'm not familiar with the Mobipocket development tools, so I'm not sure how invisible text is specified in the input file markup. From what I can gather looking at the developer's information here, the compiler appears to take HTML as input, so it can't be all that difficult.

Of course, I'm assuming here that the Mobipocket tools were used for this. I believe that Calibre can also convert HTML to .mobi, which is good for us Linux and Mac users, but I haven't tried this yet.

[BarryTX]

I appreciate your answers, and I appreciate your efforts even more. I hope you are successful in making a few $ for your efforts, best of luck with it.

[osnova]

Originally Posted by BarryTX

I appreciate your answers, and I appreciate your efforts even more. I hope you are successful in making a few $ for your efforts, best of luck with it.

Thanks. The basic idea is as bloovis described. So, it is pretty simple. Don't know why nobody has done it before.

[kelvincai]

Originally Posted by osnova

You are very welcome.



You know that the U.S. Kindle does not support other languages (Chinese, Russian, etc.) unless you apply a hack? If you have applied the hack (oops, I see you have the International Kindle, does it support Chinese?) then I think I can help you with the Chinese if you find me CU in a structured format (OSIS, XML, even one verse per line). I'll need some English guideposts (Book names and chapters, verses) in the file in order not mess up the Bible.

I have already started work on the World English (WEB) translation. So, it will be released at some point. However, the top priority project that I am working on right now is the NET Bible, hopefully with all of its notes. I'll let you know when I can work on other translations.

Thank you! No, it couldn't read Chinese/Japanese yet. However, I am going to apply the font hack, as I want use the Kindle for Bible study and church.

Please find the file in http://www.o-bible.org/download/hb5.txt
It is encoded in Big5

Please let me know if it is sufficient. Otherwise, I will try my best to get another format.

[osnova]

The format looks fine. I have figured out a way to convert it to UTF-8.

On a separate note, I've read somewhere that the font hack does not yet work with the International versions of the Kindle.

[WT Sharpe]

osnova, I'm curious:

Converting the KJV into easily-navigated text could not have been an easy task. How long did this project take?

[osnova]

I have been working on some Bible texts (converting them from/to various formats) over the years for my personal use. So, I had a good source to work with. I believe I got the initial source from somewhere online, then checked it and added the translators' notes. When I had all that, it took me about a month to figure out how to make this thing work on the Kindle so I can use it at church and while reading at home.

[osnova]

kelvincai
Could you do me a favor? Could you write down the names of Bible books in Chinese for me in the following manner in a UTF-8 file:

Genesis CHINESE NAME
Exodus CHINESE NAME

I'll need this for the CU Bible for the Kindle.

[osnova]

Great news!

I have just finished converting the NET Bible with all of its 60,000 notes to the Kindle format with the Direct Verse Jump navigation. The file is almost 14 Mb. I was surprised to find out that the Kindle supports all Greek characters out of the box, so you will be able to see them in the notes. Hebrew characters were not so lucky (the Kindle does not support them), so they will be mostly represented by Latin transliterations. All original formatting has been preserved (paragraphs, regular text, poetry, citations from OT in NT, titles, etc.)

They (Biblical Studies Press, the copyright holder) will be posting it soon to Amazon. Once they do and I have the link, I'll post it to the Mobileread. The cost will be about $5 if I am not mistaken.

The navigation, as always with Osnova, cannot be easier. A detailed hyperlinked TOC. Each note is hyperlinked within the text. Once you finish reading the note, you can return to the text by pressing “Back”. All cross-references in the notes are hyperlinked to the main text (and most abbreviations as well), so it is much easier to jump from verse to note, note to cross-referenced verse, just by following the hyperlinks and then returning to where you started by pressing “Back.” If you need a new starting point, all you need to do is enter something like “jn.3.16″ or “1co.13.4″ in the search window and press twice on the “find” icon and you are there. Yes, I have changed the abbreviations from the KJV version to make them shorter/faster to type (now the abbreviations will be listed in TOC for easy reference; thanks to WT Sharpe for the suggestion). I'll have to update the KJV to include the improvements.

Oh, you can also jump between books/sections by pressing the joystick right or left.

[osnova]

Ok. The moment we all have been waiting for has come! The NET Bible with Direct Verse Jump and all of the notes is available for purchase on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002V1I4I6

[osnova]

Just to let everybody know that I have sent to Amazon for publication in the Kindle store the World English Bible (see www.eBible.org) It usually takes some time for them to review and release the submission. I'll let you know when I receive the link.

More details on this edition that I've put in the product description:


The World English Bible is modern English translation of the Bible based on the 1901 American Standard Version, the Greek Majority Text, and the Hebrew Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

This Kindle edition of the World English Bible features, in addition to a hyperlinked table of contents, the Direct Verse Jump, a revolutionary new method of Bible navigation on the Kindle. The DVJ allows the reader to open any verse in the Bible directly in mere seconds. For example, "jn.3.16" in the search window and two clicks on "Find" opens John 3:16. The abbreviations used in the DVJ are listed in TOC for easy reference. Chapter numbers are required even for books that have only one chapter. For example, the Epistle of Jude verse 5 translates to jud.1.5 and two clicks on “Find.” On the other hand, to open the first verse of any chapter the verse number is not necessary.

The reader can also navigate between Bible books by pressing the joystick right or left. After some practice with the three navigation methods, the reader will be able to open any verse in the Kindle WEB Bible as fast as (or even faster than) in the paper copy.

Other features of the Kindle World English Bible:

– all of the WEB notes and cross-references linked to the main text (all you need is to click on the hyperlinks in the text and, when finished reading the note, to press “Back” to return to the Bible text)
– correctly formatted (for example, special poetry formatting, italics, etc.)
– words of Jesus in bold
– as any Kindle book, the WEB is searchable; however, when you first install the file please wait for the Kindle to index the whole Bible! The file is very large and it takes a long time to index. For this reason, the DVJ navigation method will be available only after the book has been indexed.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by osnova

Just to let everybody know that I have sent to Amazon for publication in the Kindle store the World English Bible (see www.eBible.org) It usually takes some time for them to review and release the submission. I'll let you know when I receive the link.

I'm looking forward to this one. I've always felt that the 1901 American Standard Version that it's based on is one of the better translations.

[HarryT]

I admire the work involved in creating this, but I'm very dubious about the quality of the translation, I'm afraid.

Pretty much all modern translations of the New Testament are based on the "Nestle-Aland 27", or "UBS4" Greek text, which is considered by pretty much everyone to be the "definitive" version of the Greek NT, combining all the extant NT manuscripts in a manner fully in accordance with the latest scholarship of the period.

The WEB bible's NT is based on what's called the "Byzantine Majority Text", which is a much older version (it's essentially what the KJV translators used), and suffers greatly from NOT having been updated in terms of modern scholarship - we now know tremendously more about the language than was the case in the 17th century.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I admire the work involved in creating this, but I'm very dubious about the quality of the translation, I'm afraid.

Pretty much all modern translations of the New Testament are based on the "Nestle-Aland 27", or "UBS4" Greek text, which is considered by pretty much everyone to be the "definitive" version of the Greek NT, combining all the extant NT manuscripts in a manner fully in accordance with the latest scholarship of the period.

The WEB bible's NT is based on what's called the "Byzantine Majority Text", which is a much older version (it's essentially what the KJV translators used), and suffers greatly from NOT having been updated in terms of modern scholarship - we now know tremendously more about the language than was the case in the 17th century.

I have to agree. I should have added "for its day" to my earlier post praising the 1901 American Standard Version. Biblical scholarship has come so far since then, and so many new discoveries have been made since that version was published that it is rendered a bit obsolete. Any modern version has to take into account how the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other discoveries such as that of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945 impact the text.

The sad part is that none of these modern translations are going to be in the public domain. Of those that are in the public domain, The ASV of 1901 is one of the better ones. Not the best, as I believe that the best English version in the public domain is probably the Revised Standard Version of 1952; but even that is based on a revision of the ASV of 1901.

I don't know if any newer English versions that take advantage of more modern scholarship are out of copyright yet. That puts serious constraints on the raw materials with which osnova has to work.