E-Sword - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

e-Sword is a Bible study

Bible study (Christian)

In Christianity, Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts; however in other denominations devotion has other meanings...

computer software

Computer software

Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....

package created by Rick Meyers and developed for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

and Pocket PC

Pocket PC

A Pocket PC is also known by Microsoft as a 'Windows Mobile Classic device'. It is a hardware specification for a handheld-sized computer, personal digital assistant , that runs the Microsoft 'Windows Mobile Classic' operating system...

. Development started in January 2000. Since that time, it has continually grown in popularity, reaching 15,000,000 downloads in January 2011. The user interface is available in twenty seven different languages. Resources are available in over eighty languages.

Purpose

Rick Meyers aspired to make Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

study freely available to anyone, while also providing power and depth to research. His theme verse is Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

10:8 "Freely you receive. Freely give". Rick Meyers states on the e-Sword homepage:

As a Bible student and teacher I have experienced the necessary work involved in searching the Scriptures for the competent preparation of a Bible study, Sunday school lesson, or a sermon. There are volumes of books available as study tools (and the Christian community is indebted to the various authors' perseverance and scholarship), but there is not enough time, money, or shelf space to properly take advantage of these resources. Computer software has changed the way we can study the Word of GOD. With a simple search or click of the mouse button, we now have access to these same volumes of scholarship within seconds!

Different versions

Pocket e-Sword 1.0 was released in December 2003. By May 2007 there had been 1,000,000 downloads of Pocket e-Sword. This is the version that runs on the Pocket PC. Pocket e-Sword 3.0.1, released 17 May 2007, was the last version to be released for Pocket PC 2002, Pocket PC 2003, and Windows Mobile 5.0. Released in June 2009, Pocket e-Sword 3.1.0 runs only Windows Mobile 6.0 and higher. Released in December 2009, Pocket e-Sword 3.2.0 runs only Windows Mobile 6.0 and higher. On 12 December 2009, it was officially announced that there would be no future development of Pocket e-Sword.

Development for e-Sword Live started in November 2007. It went public in May 2008. This is the web based version. Rick Meyers actively promotes this version for users of platforms other than Windows.

e-Sword Live Features

The web version can display Bibles, Commentaries, Dictionaries, Lexicons, and Topical Bibles

Pocket e-Sword Features

In addition to displaying Bibles, Commentaries, and Dictionaries, Version 3.1.0 offers the following components:

Bible Markup Overlay
Bible Reading Plan
Bookmarks
Devotional

Prayer List
Scripture Memory Verse List
Study Notes
Topical Notes

These components offer similar functionality to the e-Sword equivalents. Study Notes and Topical Notes are RTF text files, rather than a database.

e-Sword Features

In addition to Bibles, Commentaries and Dictionaries, Version 9.8.1 offers the following components and functionality:

Bible Markup Overlay
Bible Reading Plan
Bookmarks
Devotional
Gospel Harmony
Journal
Map/Graphic Viewer
Localization

Prayer List
Reference Library
Resource Download Manager
Scripture Memory Verse List
Sermon Illustrations
STEP
STEP Library
STEP is a standard file format used to distribute Biblical software from various publishers to consumers wanting integrated text and reference works. STEP was conceived in 1995 by Craig Rairdin of Parsons Technology and Jim VanDuzer of Loizeaux Brothers Publishers...

viewer
Study Notes
Topical Notes
Verse Analysis Tool

The program allows the user to view the text of the Bible, Bible commentaries, study notes and dictionaries. Through its customizable layout the user can chose which of these resources to view at once, or how they are arranged on the screen.

Platforms

This program was written for the Windows operating system.
Official support is provided for Windows NT 4.0,
Windows 95/98/ME, Windows2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
Whilst not officially supported, the program will run on Windows 2003, and Windows 2008.

It can run on ReactOS

ReactOS

ReactOS is an open source computer operating system intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows NT versions 5.x and up...

as a native application.

In November 2010, eStudySource partnered with CodeWeavers to provide better support for e-Sword when using CrossOver

Crossover

-Fiction and media:* Fictional crossover, a storyline combining characters or settings from separate fictional properties** Fictional crossovers in video games* Crossover , a 2002 documentary by Justin Lin...

.

Using WINE

Wine (software)

Wine is a free software application that aims to allow computer programs written for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like...

as an emulator, it can be used on a Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

System. The Ubuntu Christian Edition web forum provides the most consistent support for Linux users of e-Sword.

Scattered reports of e-Sword on OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...

, BSD, and OS/2 Warp 5.0

OS/2

OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...

, and other operating systems can be found.

The e-Sword License

The inspiration for the license used by e-Sword comes from Matthew 10:8. "Freely you receive. Freely give". The major intent of the license is:

e-Sword is to be distributed gratis;
e-Sword and its modules are not to be distributed on any website;

All documentation and modules fall under this license, unless the documentation or module creator has specified a different license. Most user created documentation uses the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike 2.0 License.

Starting with version 7.8.1, a PDF copy of the e-Sword license has been installed in the e-Sword directory, as part of the program installation. The license is also displayed from the Help Menu.

Official Resources

Official resources are listed in the Resource Download Manager screen. This screen displays resources from both e-Sword.net, and eStudySource.

Prior to e-Sword 9.8.1, the resources were listed at http://www.e-Sword.net/downloads.html and eStudySource.com, respectively.

Commercial Resources

While eStudySource is the primary outlet of resources that must be purchased., other publishers, such as The Lockman Foundation, and Bible.org also sell e-Sword resources.

Users

The projects of a small group of e-Sword activists are not officially sanctioned. The results of those projects have spurred the popularity of the program.

User Support Groups

e-Sword-users.org was the dominant web forum, providing support in six languages (English, Afrikaans, Dutch, German, Polish, Spanish, Czech, Slovak). Due it a malware issue, it was offline between 7 May 2010 and 19 July 2010. Due to management team issues, it ceased operations in May 2011.

Bible Support, replaced e-Sword-users.org on June 9, 2011. e-Sword users may download thousands of free e-Sword modules and access user-friendly message board for support.

Blind e-Sword provides support for accessibility features related to E-Sword.

User Created Utility Programs

Users have created a number of tools to ease the process of creating new resources.

The most popular utility programs are:

e-Sword ToolTip Tool, nicknamed "T3", originally used for converting Scripture references to e-Sword tooltip format, also enables one to edit and create resources for v9.x of e-Sword;
Ben's e-Sword Tool 2.0, used to import text files into different types of resources;
e-Sword User Module Conversion Utility v9.5.0, used to convert resources from e-Sword Resource Specification Format 1 to e-Sword Resource Specification Format 2;
e-Sword HotKey, a utility to aid in looking up scripture references in e-Sword when reading documents in a browser, word processor, PDF file, etc.

User Created Resources

The utility programs have made it easier for users to create, and distribute resources. The STEP

STEP Library

STEP is a standard file format used to distribute Biblical software from various publishers to consumers wanting integrated text and reference works. STEP was conceived in 1995 by Craig Rairdin of Parsons Technology and Jim VanDuzer of Loizeaux Brothers Publishers...

format is the only resource type that users have not created content in.

Users have created over ten thousand resources in over eighty different languages ranging from Zulu to Klingon. English and Spanish are the most popular modern languages. Hebrew and Greek are the most popular Biblical languages.

Locating Resources

Due to the absence of a centralized listing of user created e-Sword resources, there has been duplication of effort in creating resources. For example, there are five different versions of the Didache

Didache

The Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is a brief early Christian treatise, dated by most scholars to the late first or early 2nd century...

Original Languages Library contains a current list of publicly distributed Biblical language resources, along with where they can be obtained from;
Premium e-Sword Modules restricts itself to resources that are commercially distributed;
e-Sword en español maintains a list of Spanish language resources;
DoctorDaveT.com confines itself to "conservative, evangelical, bible believing and Christ honoring" resources;
Pastor David Cox maintains a library of English and Spanish language e-Sword resources;

Reviews of e-Sword

Reviews of Pocket e-Sword

Bible Software Review

Awards for Pocket e-Sword

2004 Pocket PC Magazine Text and Reference Bible Software

Surveys

For most of 2005, Bible software blog ran a survey on what Bible study Software was used. e-Sword garnered the most votes in the free/shareware category. It also had more votes than any of the Commercial programs.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.