Verity Bible Software
James Cuénod
This is to announce Verity: http://www.theverityproject.com/
This seems like a good place to let people know that a friend and I
have been working on putting together a Bible program that is aimed at
assisting people to do Bible study with reference to original
languages. We've got Tischendorf's Greek New Testament as well as the
WLC (Hebrew OT) alongside the NET English text. The greek and hebrew
words are all linked to dictionaries to help reading and the NET has
translation notes (right now only the free set). It's really snappy at
doing searches and it's all in a nice clean, simple interface.
Some cool stuff:
1. Our texts in parallel actually line up correctly (if you're
familiar with original languages you'll have come across the fact that
often verse numbers differ - Verity's parallel is more advanced than
that).
2. We have infinite scrolling - you can see the end of chapter one and
the beginning of chapter two (which is especially useful when chapter
breaks are in dumb places)
3. Verity is open source. We've used Qt and CLucene and so you're more
than welcome to contribute. The source code is all up at
http://code.google.com/p/theverityproject/
Check us out at http://www.theverityproject.com/
Some planned stuff includes getting CCAT's LXX in and the SBLGNT with
parsing and dictionary references and also improving the search
functionality.
It would be great to hear some feedback from anyone here who uses it.
Unfortunately there is only a Windows installer right now but I'm
developing on Fedora and my friend is on a Mac and Ubuntu so if you're
comfortable compiling, it can work for you.
Daniel Owens
building in Ubuntu?
John Dyer
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John Dyer - http://j.hn/
James Cuénod
Let me get back to you on that - sorry :(
Peter von Kaehne
Verity is developed by people who use and care about the original
languages (we're Bible college students)."
Rather presumptuous statement on your website.
Care to elaborate? Or will you simply take it down?
I suggest latter.
Cheers
peter
Darrell Smith
Ζῆ Χριστός! יְבָרֶכְךָ יָהְוֶה
--- On Mon, 3/5/12, Peter von Kaehne <ref...@gmx.net> wrote:
Daniel Owens
display of English and Hebrew better than anything else I am aware of
(among FOSS alternatives), at least where I tested it. Your advanced
parallel view is a feature worth touting, as is continuous scrolling,
though that is not strictly unique. Well done.
Perhaps you could change your description to something like: "Verity is
a program developed by Bible college students with a particular focus on
studying the Bible in the original languages. Its advanced parallel
display sets it apart from other free Bible software programs, and we
hope to add more features that will serve those studying the Bible in
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek."
Daniel
dleroux
comment.
The website has been edited - we would appreciate any further feedback
and help.
oebible
This looks nice and clean. It installed fine on my Win 7 machine. Are
you planning to add other English translations as well as NET?
Cheers, Russell
Robin Riley
James Cuénod
Thanks Peter and others, let me elaborate an email discussion just so
you know what's in our minds.
Your criticism is valid: we've changed the website.
The reason we began developing Verity is the frustration with using
the free software that is available right now. Our strongs
dictionaries, for example, don't reference G1204 we've replaced the
ref with the corresponding word. We have also worked at lining up
verses correctly because of the frustration when working with original
languages in other free software where the texts don't line up. That
comment was really borne out of these sorts of frustrations. Sorry
about it though and thank you for the crit.
To elaborate on dleroux's post - he means our comment was hurtful and
untrue - not your feedback.
@oebible: I'm planning on emailing crossway to see whether they'll be
keen to let us use the ESV. We're also thinking about a more modular
approach which would open up that possibility for the public domain
data that's available but we don't want to clog things up with random
data that isn't actually beneficial. Thanks for the reminder though,
I'll fire that email off today.
@Robin: could you give more information about your problem (you're
welcome to email me rather than writing here)?
And again, please keep the feedback coming, I must say I wasn't
expecting such a rapid response - this is great!
Peter von Kaehne
> The reason we began developing Verity is the frustration with using
> the free software that is available right now. Our strongs
> dictionaries, for example, don't reference G1204 we've replaced the
> ref with the corresponding word.
This has come up from time to time on CrossWire too. I think at least
one of our frontends (BpBible) puts directly the Greek instead of a
number and a dictionary entry in the corner.
The reason the others do are two fold: 1) a large percentage of our
users seem to have a near sentimental attachment to seeing visible
Strong numbers, instead of accepting that these are simply the
pre-computing equivalent of pointers and 2) (more crucially) people who
do not read Greek well have often paper dictionaries which are Strong
encoded. These dictionaries are often a lot better than what is
available freely/as public domain.
I do not think that this is cast in stone. If enough users want a
change, I am sure it would come easily. Certainly in Xiphos where I am
most involved in.
> We have also worked at lining up
> verses correctly because of the frustration when working with original
> languages in other free software where the texts don't line up.
Ok, at CrossWire we have introduced a couple of years ago the ability
for our texts to have alternative/arbitrary versifications. We have
modules now in practically all important versification schemes and we
still add schemes as they become apparent. We have not yet introduced
fixing parallelisation - mostly because we lack reliable data for all
schemes we use. The data published by CCEL seems to be unreliable, so we
have started working on our own. If you have data - this would be
extremely helpful to push this forward.
Re modules and other texts - I suggest strongly that you have a look at
the sword engine as a backend, instead of your current choice of a SQL
backend - the reason I am suggesting this is
a) you will have automatically access to a huge number of Original text
modules, including correct versification and the like, but also modern
modules like the ESV.
b) you gain in methods to search etc - it is all already there
c) your efforts to push parallelisation forward would be hugely
appreciated by us - it is very much the next step for us - but we need
skilled help. We are nearly there though I would think.
Yours
Peter
Peter von Kaehne
> lack reliable data for all
> schemes we use.
What I mean here is data to connect, say Gen23:45 in one text with
Gen24:1 in another and Gen 24:4 in a third. (the references are made up
and I am at the moment not even sure if a Gen23:45 exists).
This data is hard to come by at a verse level. It can be created
relatively fast by hand at a chapter start/end level, but even then
there are flaws in the middle. So we are plodding along...
And before we do not have at least for our main versifications the data
we need we can not easily throw it together into a useful application.
But any pointers re reliable sources of such data are highly appreciated.
Peter
Jonathan Morgan
On 06/03/12 06:17, James Cuénod wrote:This has come up from time to time on CrossWire too. I think at least
> The reason we began developing Verity is the frustration with using
> the free software that is available right now. Our strongs
> dictionaries, for example, don't reference G1204 we've replaced the
> ref with the corresponding word.
one of our frontends (BpBible) puts directly the Greek instead of a
number and a dictionary entry in the corner.
BPBible gives you the option of showing one of Strong's Numbers, transliterated original language word, pronunciation or original language word. However, it's worth noting that this is only when showing equivalent words inline for an enabled module (e.g. in the KJV). Showing WLC or WHNU or Tischendorf in parallel with any other version will display just the original language text, because that's what the text of the module is. The dictionary in which Strong's definitions are looked up in (which I think James is referring to) will be the default Strong's dictionaries, typically CrossWire's StrongsHebrew and StrongsGreek. These are indexed by number and do not include the original language text of the definition (though StrongsRealGreek and StrongsRealHebrew will include that original language text).
Just to make it clear, areas where BPBible (and quite probably other SWORD software) would differ from Verity:
1. Clicking on words in the original language Bibles would not open the equivalent reference in a Strong's dictionary (though if the module was embedded with Strongs numbers and they were displayed separately in some form the separate form would be able to be clicked on).
2. Merging the two original language texts seamlessly into one parallel view (using Hebrew in OT and Greek in NT) is not possible.
3. The Strong's dictionary displayed would by default neither be as neatly formatted or give as much prominence to the original language.
Some other suggestions/comments about Verity:
1. The application seems pretty well polished. Display is neat, the content in the dictionary is well-formatted and logical, etc. I like the touch of striping alternate verses different colours for a table view: it helps distinguishing things without standing out too much.
2. On the other hand, Verity seems very limited to a few particular use cases. While I could probably make BPBible work like Verity in the ways I identified it doesn't, you might have more trouble making Verity support the general reader more interested in reading just one Bible at a time rather than in parallel (then again, you may not care).
3. I haven't looked at how it is implemented, but continuous scrolling in Verity feels very sluggish. You get to the end of a chapter and then it seems like you wait for many seconds before the next chapter comes. BPBible also implements it, and I find it almost always has the next chapter loaded before I get down to the end of the current chapter.
4. As far as I can tell, there is no way to look up an entry in the dictionary without finding the word and clicking on it in the text. You may want to be able to just type in a word and find its entry.
5. For notes, original language definitions, etc. BPBible will show the note or definition in a tooltip rather than having it appear in a separate Window that may or may not be shown by default. I would usually prefer that way of operating.
Hopefully these comments are helpful rather than troublesome.
The reason the others do are two fold: 1) a large percentage of our
users seem to have a near sentimental attachment to seeing visible
Strong numbers, instead of accepting that these are simply the
pre-computing equivalent of pointers and 2) (more crucially) people who
do not read Greek well have often paper dictionaries which are Strong
encoded. These dictionaries are often a lot better than what is
available freely/as public domain.
I do not think that this is cast in stone. If enough users want a
change, I am sure it would come easily. Certainly in Xiphos where I am
most involved in.
Ok, at CrossWire we have introduced a couple of years ago the ability
> We have also worked at lining up
> verses correctly because of the frustration when working with original
> languages in other free software where the texts don't line up.
for our texts to have alternative/arbitrary versifications. We have
modules now in practically all important versification schemes and we
still add schemes as they become apparent. We have not yet introduced
fixing parallelisation - mostly because we lack reliable data for all
schemes we use. The data published by CCEL seems to be unreliable, so we
have started working on our own. If you have data - this would be
extremely helpful to push this forward.
Re modules and other texts - I suggest strongly that you have a look at
the sword engine as a backend, instead of your current choice of a SQL
backend - the reason I am suggesting this is
I would second this suggestion. In developing BPBible we have had problems with SWORD, but if we had had to negotiate with copyright holders and do other such non-programming tasks then the project would probably never have got off the ground.
Note also that GPLv3 is unfortunately not compatible with the GPLv2 that SWORD uses. If you were to decide to use SWORD you would need to relicense with a GPLv2 compatible license.
Jon
a) you will have automatically access to a huge number of Original text
modules, including correct versification and the like, but also modern
modules like the ESV.
b) you gain in methods to search etc - it is all already there
c) your efforts to push parallelisation forward would be hugely
appreciated by us - it is very much the next step for us - but we need
skilled help. We are nearly there though I would think.
Yours
Peter
Daniel Owens
But any pointers re reliable sources of such data are highly appreciated.
Daniel
David Troidl
David
Troy A. Griffitts
Thank you for all the hard work and nice continuous scrolling + adjusted
alignment Bible program.
I spent some time this afternoon looking at the code and generated a
very rough patch to display Bible data from SWORD.
screenshot: http://crosswire.org/~scribe/verity-sword.png
The patch is attached as both a plain text and tar.gz (in case anyone's
mailer has trouble) and applies against svn -r 160
It requires sword svn as of -r 2691 installed. You can grab that with:
svn co http://crosswire.org/svn/sword/trunk sword
The patch is by no means pretty and not likely bug free, but it might
give you an idea of how your team could use the SWORD engine to access
our fairly large library of books.
Everything we do is to help projects like yours, so please feel free to
use what you'd like.
Sincerely,
Troy A. Griffitts