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This years BibleTech was a great event! I enjoyed meeting and talking with so many people that are passionate about the Bible and technology. The highlight of the conference for me was talking with so many people about Bible software and mobile technologies.

I also found Sean Boisen talks on zoomable user interfaces very thought provoking. Almost all of the talks I went to were very applicable and interesting.
You can find some great summaries of some of the talks on palmsolo and blogos.

I also had a great and entertaining time playing rock band with some of the logos developers. Singing is not one of their talents (it certainly isn’t mine)
If you are interested in the Bible and technology I would highly recommend going to the next BibleTech.

Stephen

More details coming later this week, but check out the article on BibleTech08: Day 2 - Session 04, The Challenges & Future of Bible Software in a Mobile World.

We at Olive Tree are excited about new developments in our handling of Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Over the past several months, we have moved to UNICODE!

In recent years, there have been impressive technological advances made for displaying languages like Hebrew and Aramaic with complex scripts, from the establishment and expansion of the UNICODE standard to the development of “smart fonts,” which position the glyphs in a context-sensitive manner. These developments have paved the way for some strikingly beautiful Hebrew and Aramaic fonts, most notably EzraSIL and SBL Hebrew. Handheld devices, however, have sought to meet their tight constraints on speed and storage by excising anything in the operating system that might be extraneous. As such, handheld devices generally do not include complex script support, with some not even supporting UNICODE at all. Thus, in general, Hebrew and Aramaic texts have not been able to be displayed in a manner that takes advantage of these recent breakthroughs in typography.

We are delighted to announce that we have overcome the limitations of the Palm and Windows Mobile operating systems with regard to complex script support! On these platforms, we are able to display Hebrew and Aramaic texts with all the beauty that recent UNICODE-based smart fonts have allowed. This includes our BHS (HMT) module with all of the vowels, cantillation marks, and symbols to which you are accustomed in the print edition of BHS. (Of course, this does not include the critical apparatus, the massora magnum, or the massora parva.) It also includes our BHS Add-On—Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology module, which allows you to click on a Hebrew or Aramaic word, see the lexeme, morphological information, a gloss, and a link to the appropriate entry in an abridged version of the BDB dictionary, one of the finest dictionaries available for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. We also give independent access to BDB, so you can see the entry for any particular lexeme you would like, or you can browse through entries in BDB.

This new way of representing and displaying Hebrew and Aramaic also applies to our new Qumran (non-biblical texts) module, complete with editorial symbols, lexical and morphological information, a gloss, and a link to the appropriate entry in BDB (provided that you have the BHS Add-On—Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology module). If you missed my blog article on the Qumran texts, you can find it here.

On Palm and Windows Mobile, you can view these Hebrew and Aramaic texts using the EzraSIL font, which looks virtually identical to the printed edition of BHS except that EzraSIL is easier to read when there are multiple marks around one consonant than the print edition is. On Windows Mobile, you have the additional option of downloading the freely available and aesthetically-pleasing SBL Hebrew font and using it as well.

I think that the results of this new way of displaying the texts are really quite stunning, but you do not have to take my word for it. Here are two screenshots for you. The first is a screenshot of our our BHS (HMT) module at Psalm 23, and the second is a screenshot of our Qumran (non-biblical texts) module at column 1, line 11 of 1QS (The Community Rule).

~Drayton B.

We are very excited to be attending and presenting at this year’s Bible Technology Conference in Seattle, WA on January 25th and 26th. Bible Tech 2008 is a conference that will explore the intersection of Bible and technology. If you are passionate about the Bible and technology or just want to meet some of the people working in this field we would encourage you to attend Bible Tech 2008. You can find out more information here.

Olive Tree will be giving two presentations at this years Bible Tech. The President and CEO of Olive Tree (Drew Haninger) will talking about “Electronic Publishing and Bible Software in a Fast-Moving Mobile Landscape.” The handheld mobile technology including PDA’s, Smartphones, and cell phones is in constant motion with the rapidly increasing number of platforms on the market. How does a publisher of Biblical content keep up? How do they decide which platforms are worth supporting now, and which ones it would be better to just wait and see how they mature? For mobile electronic publishers today there is a potential quagmire of platforms, operating systems, screen sizes, user interface paradigms, software delivery methods, and publisher permissions. Mr. Haninger will touch on some of the different methods of approaching this rapidly changing market. In addition, he will present a quick overview of many handheld technologies and platforms such as Palm, Pocket PC, Smartphone, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, etc.

I will also be presenting at this years Bible Tech. My talk is on “The Challenges and Future of Bible Software in a Mobile World”. Developing Bible Software for mobile devices is a challenging endeavor. Much of the development time is spent on the logistics of developing for mobile devices. I will discuss many of these challenges and offer some insight for how to address some of these challenges. Mobile technology is moving forward at a frenzied pace. What does the future have in store for Bible software in the mobile world? Will these same challenges be around in five or ten years?

We are excited to meet and talk with others in the area of Bible and technology. We hope to see you there. If you come to Bible Tech 2008 please come and find myself or Drew. We would love to talk with you about mobile Bible software.
Stephen

We at Olive Tree are announcing the release of a new Qumran (non-biblical scrolls) module. The discovery of thousands of documents and fragments thereof, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, at Khirbet Qumran beginning in 1947 is the greatest archaeological discovery related to the Bible in modern times. Dating from 250BC to 70AD, the Dead Sea Scrolls have been of inestimable importance to scholars and students in a variety of fields, most especially Old Testament studies, New Testament studies, and Second Temple Judaism. They have cast light on myriads of historical, theological, literary, sociological, and philological matters.

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain a variety of types of documents. Well-known among them are our oldest copies of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament books (by approximately one thousand years), but they also contain commentaries on Old Testament books, fascinating theological treatises, documents on community living, and more. This new module contains virtually all of the scrolls with the exception of the copies of Old Testament books.

The electronic database of Qumran texts was prepared by Marty Abegg, Jr., the Ben Zion Wacholder Professor of Dead Sea Scroll Studies at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC, Canada. Dr. Abegg is one of the world’s leading Qumran scholars, so his work is of the finest quality. Moreover, Dr. Abegg has tagged the database for morphology. Thus, you can click on a word to see its lexical and parsing information in the same way that you can for the Hebrew Old Testament (BHS) if you have our BHS Add-On—Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology module. You can also get a quick sense of the meaning of the lexeme from a gloss, also provided courtesy of Dr. Abegg. If you have the BHS Add-On module, then you can even click on a link to the appropriate Hebrew or Aramaic entry in the well-respected BDB dictionary if there is an entry in BDB for that lexeme.

Our Qumran module takes advantage of our recent work in shifting to Unicode encoding for Hebrew and Aramaic in our BHS (HMT) and BHS Add-On—Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology modules. That means that you will see our Qumran texts with stunningly sharp, aesthetically-pleasing Unicode “smart-fonts” that are geared toward maximum readability. Our Qumran module also contains scholarly editorial marks, almost always the same editorial marks with which you may be familiar from the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (DJD) series. Finally, searching capabilities are provided via our familiar search screen.

We at Olive Tree are excited about this new module! We hope you will check out the product description here.

~Drayton B.