Go Bible - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Go Bible is a free Bible viewer application for Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

mobile phone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

s (Java ME

Java Platform, Micro Edition

Java Platform, Micro Edition, or Java ME, is a Java platform designed for embedded systems . Target devices range from industrial controls to mobile phones and set-top boxes...

MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0). It was developed by Jolon Faichney in Surf City

Surfers Paradise, Queensland

Surfers Paradise is a suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. At the 2006 Census, Surfers Paradise had a population of 18,501....

, Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast, Queensland

Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, with help from several other people who assisted in making versions for other languages and translations. Go Bible is installed like any other midlet

MIDlet

A MIDlet is an application that uses the Mobile Information Device Profile of the Connected Limited Device Configuration for the Java ME environment...

by copying the .jar and .jad file to the cell phone by USB or Bluetooth

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...

. The English KJV Go Bible 1.1 can also be installed using WAP

Wireless Application Protocol

Wireless Application Protocol is a technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network.A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices such as mobile phones that uses the protocol.Before the introduction of WAP, mobile service providers had limited opportunities to offer...

download.

Features

Go Bible 2.2.6 featured:

Christ’s Words in red
Red letter edition
The term red letter edition is used to describe Bibles in which words spoken by Jesus, commonly only while he was on the Earth, are printed in red ink...
SMS
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...

scriptures
Bookmarks
History
Coloured themes
Fast search

Releases

Releases subsequent to 2.2.6 are hosted on the SVN server for the CrossWire Bible Society. Compiled versions of Go Bible Creator can be downloaded from the relevant Google groups.

2011-03-11 Go Bible 2.4.1 – bug fix in Go Bible Creator in word-wrap for the manifest
2010-04-17 Go Bible 2.4.0 – several bug fixes and enhancements; plus removed Send MMS from menu options, and ended support for MIDP 1.0
2009-07-10 Go Bible 2.3.5 – added support in Go Bible Creator for USFM tag /r
2009-05-11 Go Bible 2.3.4 – more minor bug fixes for Go Bible Creator
2009-04-27 Go Bible 2.3.3 – has some bug fixes for Go Bible Creator
2008-09-24 Go Bible 2.3.2 – source code checked in, but binary not posted on original site

In July 2008, Go Bible was adopted as a software development project by the CrossWire Bible Society.

2008-03-31 Go Bible 2.2.6 – latest version of English KJV Go Bible and twenty two other languages
2008-03-26 Go Bible 2.2.5
2007-08-09 Go Bible 2.2.4 – improvement to Go Bible Creator
2007-04-12 Go Bible 2.2.3
2007-02-06 Go Bible 2.2.2
2006-07-30 Go Bible 2.2.1
2006-03-16 Go Bible 2.2
2004-06-28 Go Bible 2.0
2003-09-28 Go Bible 1.01

The news page on the Go Bible website provides some more details. For more detailed development history up to March 2005, see .

Other websites

Third-party developers have already published Go Bible translations in the following further languages:

Albanian -
Armenian -
Basque -
Breton (NT) -
Burmese -
Cebuano -
Chamorro (portions) -
Coptic -
Croatian -
Czech -
Dari -
Esperanto -
Estonian -
Georgian -
Greek -
Haitian Creole -
Hebrew (OT) -
Hindi -
Hungarian -
Icelandic -
Indonesian/Bahasa -
Japanese -
Kabyle -
Kekchi -
Korean -
Latin (Vulgate) -
Latvian -
Lithuanian -
Malayalam -
Manx Gaelic (portions) -
Maori -
Mizo -
Nepali -
Paite -
Pashto -
Persian -
Polish -
Potawatomi (portions) -
Serbian -
Shuar -
Slovak -
Slovenian -
Swahili -
Ukrainian -
Uma -
Urdu -
Tamajaq (portions) -
Tamil -
Thai -
Turkish -
Welsh -
Wolof -
Xhosa -

These lists are likely to grow as more people become involved in using the developer application.

Many of the Go Bible translations still use English for the Bible book names, and for the user interface

User interface

The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...

, though that is now starting to change as developers become more familiar with the features of the developer application.

Unicode fonts

Go Bible uses the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

fonts installed by the mobile phone manufacturer. Some translations may not display correctly on all phones due to missing code pages or individual codes. Also, there are problems with some Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....

phones with regard to displaying Arabic script and other right-to-left languages. Rendering such languages properly depends on having a correct implementation of the bidirectional algorithm as well as glyph shaping.

Phones with limited memory

It is possible to divide Go Bible into several smaller collections so that the JAR files can be installed in mobile phones with limited memory. For some models, splitting into Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

and New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

is sufficient. For older models, splitting into files smaller than 1MB, 512KB, 256KB or 128KB may be necessary. Go Bible 1.0 is suitable for phones with 64KB JAR file limit.

Phones that check certificates

Go Bible applications are not digitally signed. Some phone models by default will not install unsigned applications. In many such cases, it is usually possible to find a phone setting to change to accept unsigned applications.

Developer application

The author has also provided a developer kit

Software development kit

A software development kit is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.It may be something as simple...

called Go Bible Creator. This enables further translations and language versions to be generated by users. Go Bible Creator takes as data input Bible files in Theological Markup Language

Theological Markup Language

The Theological Markup Language is a "royalty-free" XML-based format created in 1998 by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to create electronic theological texts. Other formats such as STEP and Logos Library System were found unacceptable by CCEL as they are proprietary, prompting the...

(ThML) or Open Scripture Information Standard

Open Scripture Information Standard

Open Scripture Information Standard is an XML application , that defines tags for marking up Bibles, theological commentaries, and other related literature....

(OSIS). From version 2.3.2, the ability to process Unified Standard Format Markers (USFM) has been added.

Go Bible Creator supports two useful additional features:

Book name mapping – this enables translated Bible book names to be mapped to English book names.
Translated user interface – this requires the translation of 73 words or short phrases from the English default UI.

Go Bible Creator was used successfully by the author of the Mobile Bible site in Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

to create several Go Bible collections in various languages.

Another user has started a Go Bible Box.net account, from which several more (>58) Go Bible collections may be downloaded.

The author has started a Go Bible Project on Google Code, but for discussing the Go Bible source code is Go Bible Dev.

Go Bible Creator is not limited to making Bible collections. It can also be used to create other types of e-Book, such as an electronic hymn book (words only) or daily devotionals.

The original source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

for both GoBibleCore and GoBibleCreator was available online under the new BSD license. The latest source code is available from CrossWire, under the GNU GPLv2

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

license.

One member of the Theologische Initiative Freiburg has written software scripts to convert Zefania XML

Zefania XML

Zefania XML Bible markup language is an XML-based language for the description of Biblical texts. This allows applications that understand XML, to read and process Bible texts. Zefania XML is available under the GNU General Public License.- External links :...

Bible modules into the ThML

Theological Markup Language

format for use with Go Bible Creator. Though the description is "Converts a Zefania XML

Zefania XML

bible modul to a SWORD -modul", the download includes a tool for Go Bible. The host language is German.

Distribution

Go Bible is listed in a number of free and open source

Foss

Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...

software distributor sites, such as:

Softpedia
Softpedia
Softpedia is an Internet web site that indexes information and provides software downloads. The site also covers major technology, science, health, and entertainment news from both external and in-house sources and provides software and game reviews. , it is one of the top 500 websites according to...
GetJar
GetJar
GetJar is an independent mobile phone application store founded in Lithuania in 2004, with offices in Vilnius, Lithuania and San Mateo, California....
HandyByte
Game-Thing

Go Bible is also being used on a number of Christian websites.

Go Bible in Java ME emulators

The Go Bible application can be previewed in the following Java ME emulator

Emulator

In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...

MicroEmulator
Mpowerplayer
Mpowerplayer
mpowerplayer is a technology-startup company based in Reston, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.. The company offers a solution for the video game industry to enable their customers to browse and demo mobile games on their web browser before buying them...

It is also possible to run Go Bible applications on a 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...

by installing the following:

IBM MIDP 2.0 Java Emulator

It is even possible to run Go Bible in a Sony PlayStation Portable

PlayStation Portable

The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...

by installing a Java emulator for the PSP. See:

PSPKVM

Go Bible also works in the JVM

Java Virtual Machine

A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:...

called Esmertec Jbed http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/J2ME_Programming/Esmertec_Jbed, which can be installed on various mobile phone platforms.

Similar products

OliveTree Bible Software has a number of Bible Reader applications for various mobile phone and PDA platforms.
jBible is a Russian website with free Bible reading applications for Java mobile phones. Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian Bibles are available.
Sky Bible is an application for mobile phones and hand held devices, used to view Bible text in many languages. Sky Bible is intended for Symbian
Symbian
Symbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...

phones.
YouVersion Bible application for Java phones.

External links

Go Bible original website – frozen at version 2.2.6
Go Bible Forum
Go Bible Team blog

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