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Here is a short video showing how to use the ESV Study Bible on Olive Tree’s iPhone BibleReader.

On June 16-18, I attended the conference “The Bible and Computers: Present and Future of a Discipline” in the suburbs of Madrid, Spain. At this conference, a group of people from many different nations interested in the intersection between Biblical studies and computer technology gathered together to hear presentations on current research. Most of those present were university professors.

There were three types of talks presented. The first group involved research that academics are doing that produce databases that will eventually be—if they have not already been—incorporated into Bible software packages. It was exciting for me to hear some of what is on the horizon. For example, I am interested in Hebrew syntax, so I enjoyed listening to presentations by representatives of two different groups that have been working on syntactically tagging the entire Old Testament. The second group of talks revolved around the progress and state of existing Bible software packages. I got to hear about the latest bells and whistles on a variety of Bible software programs. Finally, the third group focused on the results of using Bible software packages, from successful strategies for teaching Hebrew and Greek more effectively with the use of Bible software to the results of research enabled by Bible software. It was gratifying to hear how Bible software is helping professors in their teaching and research of the Bible.

I presented a talk at the conference entitled “Displaying Hebrew and Aramaic on Handheld Devices That Lack Proper Complex Script Support.” In my talk, I set the stage by discussing the way in which complex script technology has improved on personal computers in recent years, but these improvements have not yet been extended to mobile devices. I then discussed some possible strategies for overcoming these limitations on mobile devices, giving the positives and negatives of each approach. Finally, I discussed the approach we at Olive Tree took in successfully overcoming these obstacles—to my knowledge producing the first aesthetically pleasing Hebrew and Aramaic texts with all the desired vowels, cantillation marks, and symbols on mobile devices. My talk was warmly received by the audience of scholars. I supplemented my presentation’s screenshots by showing off BibleReader’s Hebrew and Aramaic display to many of the conference’s participants on an actual Windows Mobile device.

Here is a list of our products that use this innovative display technology: BHS, BHS Add-On - Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology, and Qumran (non-biblical texts). You can see my previous blog posts about it here, here, and here.

~Drayton B.

We have made an update to how the Windows Mobile soft keys work if you enable the soft keys (you can enable this option in Menu->Options->Toolbar Options). When you enable the soft keys, the main toolbar is replaced by a left and right soft key. You can customize what commands appear under the left soft key menu by changing the commands for the primary toolbar in the “Toolbar Options”.

This feature is nice for one-handed navigation because now you can access all of the commands on the toolbar through the soft key menu system.

You can download a beta version of the BibleReader with this updated feature from http://www.olivetree.com/download/beta/palmppc/.

- Stephen

Few Christian writers, from the present or the past, have affected my life and the lives of other Christians I know as much as Andrew Murray (1828-1917). His books are the kind you come back to again and again, savoring every line, reading slowly and prayerfully, drawing near to the Christ he knew and loved and expressed so well. It’s hard to read very far without stopping to pray, for the Spirit of prayer seems to be the very atmosphere of Andrew Murray’s books; moreover, the author speaks so directly to you, the reader, that it’s sometimes hard to believe you don’t know him; of course, in the Spirit, as a fellow member of Christ’s body, you do.

Andrew Murray grew up in South Africa nearly two centuries ago, both his father and grandfather being Scottish missionaries to that vast, untamed land. After attending school in Aberdeen, Scotland, and receiving theological training in the Netherlands, Andrew returned to South Africa as an ordained minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. This author almost never refers to himself in his books, so it’s surprising to read a biography of Murray and to find out about the trials he endured and the burdens he bore. Once, as a young pastor, serving remote farmers in the wide-open landscape, he was surrounded by wolves. After his horse threw him and ran away, Murray walked by faith the rest of the way to his parishioners’ farmhouse, many miles it was, wolves snapping at him all the while but never touching him. Though a man of much practical experience, it seems that Murray focuses every book on one thing only: the indwelling Christ.

Olive Tree Bible Software is privileged to be able to publish in electronic format several of this beloved writer’s books (which number some 240), a few of which I’ll describe briefly. In The New Life: Words of God for Young Disciples of Christ Murray addresses new believers concerning the wonderful life they have received, his clear intention being to establish firmly their faith in Christ and to encourage them on the path of life and fruitfulness in Him. In With Christ in the School of Prayer, the author presents thirty-one lessons on prayer, one for every day of the month, echoing the disciples’ plea, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Reading this book, one is infused with faith that God wants to answer our prayers even more than we want them answered; in fact, He put the desire within us to begin with. In The Deeper Christian Life, Murray relates that the first and chief need of our Christian life is fellowship with God. Indeed, this theme, and the blessedness of abiding moment by moment in Christ, in absolute surrender, trusting Him to accomplish all that He has promised to do in us and through us, is the essential message of Andrew Murray’s fervent ministry to the body of Christ.

“I have learnt,” he says, “to place myself before God every day, as a vessel to be filled with His Holy Sprit. He has filled me with the blessed assurance that He, as the everlasting God, has guaranteed His work in me. If there is one lesson that I am learning day by day, it is this; that it is God who worketh all in all. Oh, that I could help any brother or sister to realize this!”

Many of you may remember my post about one handed navigation on Palm from the start of the summer. I am pleased to say that we have added more one handed navigation features to both Palm and Pocket PC I have three main ways that I use the BibleReader. I use the BibleReader for reading, following along in church/Bible studies, and studying the Bible. When I am reading or following along in church I typically don’t have my stylus out. Having to pull it out is distracting and too cumbersome for performing a simple task. This is where one handed navigation is a life saver. You can now use most features of the BibleReader without using a stylus

The new one handed navigation features are in version 3.69.228 and above of the BibleReader. You can download this version from the beta web site http://www.olivetree.com/download/beta/palmppc/.

The big new feature that we added for one handed navigation is “5-way navigation of hyperlinks”. This feature lets you select hyperlinks (including publisher notes) using the 5-way arrow pad. There are two options that you can enable with this feature. You can have the left/right arrows navigate hyperlinks and/or you can have the up/down arrows navigate the hyperlinks. Palm users can find these options the Menu->Options->Preferences and then select “Scrolling” from the drop down in the upper right corner. Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) users can find these preference in the “Scrolling Preferences”.

If you choose to have the up/down arrows navigate the hyperlinks then when you click on the down arrow it will put a dotted box around the next hyperlink on the screen. If there are no more hyperlinks on the screen then it will do the scrolling behavior for the down arrow. You can click on the center button to follow a hyperlink. For books like CWSB and Gramcord that have lots of hyperlinks it can be helpful to enable both the up/down and left/right arrows to navigate hyperlinks. When you have both options selected clicking on the down arrow will go to the hyperlink below the hyperlink with the box around it.

When you are just reading having the arrow keys constantly highlighting hyperlinks can be annoying. You don’t want to have to go to the options every time to turn this feature on/off since that would defeat the purpose of being able to quickly select a hyperlink without pulling out your stylus. We added a shortcut called “Toggle 5Way Hyperlink”. You can assign this shortcut to a hardware key on your device. You can use this shortcut to turn the 5-way navigation of hyperlinks on and off.

On Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition and Windows Mobile 6 Professional (Windows Mobile devices with soft keys) we have added another toolbar that makes one-handed navigation much easier. In the toolbar options you can enable the option to “Use Windows Mobile 5 & 6 Soft Keys”. This will make the main toolbar be two buttons that work with the left and right soft keys. With this toolbar you can easily access all of the BibleReader features without having to use the stylus to access the toolbar.

As if that wasn’t enough we have also fixed up the 5-way navigation on many of the Windows Mobile BibleReader dialog boxes. Now you can use your 5-way keys to navigate dialog boxes like the search screen.

There are other one handed navigation features in the Palm and Windows Mobile BibleReader. You can read about some of them in the blog one handed navigation on Palm. Many of the features talked about in that blog article also apply to the Windows Mobile BibleReader.
-Stephen

We recently put up a new beta Smartphone BibleReader. This is one of the most exciting betas we have ever posted for any platform! The list of cool new features added to the Smartphone BibleReader is simply amazing.

For starters we added support for selecting hyperlinks on Smartphone using the 5-way arrow button. This opens a lot of new resources on Smartphone that were not usable before. With hyperlink support you can use the KJV and NASB strongs Bibles and see the Strong’s definition for each word in the Bible. You can also use the Complete Word Study Bible, Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and many other Bibles and Bible study tools from Olive Tree.

We also added support for Greek and Hebrew. You can now use Gramcord, HMT, and any other resource that has Greek and Hebrew in it on your Smartphone.

As if that wasn’t enough, we also added support for dictionaries. So now you can use Easton’s Bible Dictionary, Unger’s Bible Dictionary, EDNT, TWOT, and all the other Olive Tree dictionaries on Smartphone.

We didn’t stop there. We then went on to change the shortcut options to support more keys, reorganize the menu, add more options, add support for displaying images in Olive Tree resources, and add support for MacArthur New Testament Commentary.

Since this version of the Smartphone BibleReader is still in beta not all of the products that work on it will be visible on Olive Tree’s web site when you have selected Smartphone as your device. If you want to see the complete list of products that work with this new Smartphone beta BibleReader change your device to Windows Mobile Pocket PC on the Olive Tree web site. All of the products, with the exception of Bible Atlas, multimedia in iLumina, Chinese, Arabic, and The Message audio will work with this Smartphone beta BibleReader.

You can download the Smartphone beta BibleReader here.

Enjoy!

Stephen

Exciting changes are happening here at Olive Tree Bible Software with regard to the handling and display of Hebrew and Aramaic text! A variety of new technologies related to the representation and rendering of complex scripts have been developed over the past few years, and we are looking to take advantage of them as much as possible. These changes will allow us to give a clearer presentation of Hebrew and Aramaic characters. We are moving to Unicode, beginning with the mobile devices that support it, namely Pocket PCs. We are making this switch first for our Hebrew Masoretic Text Old Testament, and we envision switching to Unicode soon for our Hebrew Masoretic Text with Parsing and BDB Dictionary as well. Unicode allows for a more consistent and font-independent representation of Hebrew and Aramaic texts than has been possible in the past, and its adoption is spreading across platforms and applications. Switching to Unicode now will allow us to take advantage of its implementation on the Pocket PC and position us well for the coming day in which more handheld devices will support Unicode. This switch to Unicode allows for better Hebrew and Aramaic font rendering. Now the consonants, vowels, dageshes, cantillation marks (accents), and other Masoretic symbols can all be shown. Moreover, recent developments in font technologies allow the vowels, cantillation marks, and other symbols to be placed appropriately around the consonants in order to promote maximum readability. The results can be quite stunning.

There are currently a variety of obstacles at the level of operating system support for the use of the most advanced Hebrew fonts on handheld devices, but we at Olive Tree are dreaming big. We have set our sights high, dreaming of a presentation that will provide you with an electronic version of the Masoretic text with all of the information in the main body of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) as well as kethib/qere information. Not only will the standard consonants, vowels, dageshes, and cantillation marks be present, but so will be other symbols like maqqephs, soph pasuqs, paseqs, raphes (when BHS prints them), pethuhas, and sethumas. Moreover, we are seeking to make the display aesthetically pleasing and geared toward maximum readability. We are hoping that it can equal the quality we achieved with this screenshot, which begins at Genesis 1:1:

A beta version of the Hebrew Masoretic Text Old Testament for Pocket PC will soon be available from our website for trial. We will look forward to your feedback. If you know Hebrew and/or Aramaic and would like to be notified when the beta appears, let us know at beta02@olivetree.com.

For those of you who are biblical scholars or others educated in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, this is a major step forward in your being able to gain all the information you need about the Hebrew and Aramaic text on your mobile device wherever you are. For those of you who leave intense language study to others but still want to compare your Bible translations to the Hebrew or Aramaic original to gain a better understanding of a particular word or verse, this will make your decipherment of the original Hebrew or Aramaic an easier and more enjoyable experience.

Those of you who read this blog regularly may not recognize my name. I am a new addition to the Olive Tree team, specializing in those areas of Olive Tree’s software that deal with Hebrew and Aramaic. After studying computer science and mathematics at the University of Virginia and working in software development for a few years, I shifted my primary attention to the Old Testament. I picked up a Master’s degree in Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and I am currently working on a PhD at the University of Chicago in Northwest Semitic Philology in the Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations Department, the department to which the Oriental Institute is attached. (Hebrew and Aramaic are Northwest Semitic languages.) I am excited about improving the quality of the representation and rendering of the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament as well as advancing searching capabilities. I am also excited about bringing additional ancient texts to your handheld device as well; look out for a release of a module containing non-biblical texts from Qumran later this summer or fall! Let us know (beta02@olivetree.com) if you would like to be notified when these texts, which are important both for the study of the Old Testament and the New Testament, become available.

Having done a number of conversion projects for Olive Tree Bible Software in the past year, perhaps none have been as satisfying as finally being able to offer our users the NIV Study Bible Notes. What I like so much about this resource is its versatility. The casual reader can take advantage of these notes simply by looking up a verse and reading the commentary. Those looking for more in-depth study will appreciate the numerous links both directly to cross references as well as links to similar commentary on another verse. Users can find a verse that talks about “God’s grace and peace,” like Romans 1:7, and appreciate the value of God’s unmerited favor toward us and the abiding peace He provides. If I want more verses on “God’s peace”, I can quickly navigate to Romans 5:7, Philippians 4:7, Galatians 1:3, or Ephesians 1:2, and if I want to read more commentary about “God’s peace,” the NIV Study Bible Notes provides links to notes on Philippians 4:7 and John 20:19. The presence of links within the text to other commentary AND links to related Bible verses makes studying the Bible with the NIV Study Bible Notes an enjoyable, easy and meaningful exercise.

I truly believe that this is the most user friendly, useful resource I have had the pleasure of working on, and it takes full advantage of the powerful, customizable capabilities of the Olive Tree BibleReader. Using both the Verse Chooser and the Table of Contents (TOC) Chooser, users are afforded several navigation options. The Verse Chooser allows for speedy navigation to commentary on a specific verse, while the more detailed TOC Chooser provides a more in-depth navigation system that includes detailed navigation to elements of the introductions to each Bible book, 5 short essays, useful indexes and all the notes as well.

One last feature of the NIV Study Bible Notes that I would like to mention is the index system. This resource has two indexes, an Index of Subjects and an Index of Notes. The Index of Subjects has links to Bible verses on a particular subject, and the Index of Notes has links to commentary on a particular subject. Both indexes are topical in nature, and you can navigate to them using the TOC Chooser. Navigating to a topic like “Peace” simply requires going to TOC mode by unchecking the box at the bottom of the Verse Chooser that says “verse mode.” I select Study Helps, choose Index to Subjects or Index to Notes, click on the letter P, and lastly select Peace. Then I have a helpful list of Bible verses or commentary on the topic of peace, and I can continue my Bible study on that topic.

The NIV Study Bible Notes is a powerful resource that I can happily recommend for all readers of the Bible!

I have been doing most of my reading electronically on a PDA or smartphone for the past 2 years. When I first started reading books electronically I did not like how much I had to scroll. When reading a paper book you can usually read for a few minutes before turning a page. On a PDA or smartphone it usually takes less than a minute before you have read all the text on the screen and have to scroll. This makes for a lot of scrolling to read through a book. The second problem with scrolling is that the text “jumps” by a line or screen when you scroll. Your eye has to do a quick adjustment to find out where to begin reading again after you finish scrolling. This becomes tiring when reading electronically for a long time.

So you may be wondering why I didn’t give up on reading electronic books. Auto scrolling was the reason. Auto scrolling solves both of these problems with reading electronically. On the Pocket PC BibleReader you can turn on auto scrolling by going to Menu->Display->Toggle Auto Scroll. On the Palm BibleReader you can turn on auto scrolling from Menu->Options->Toggle Auto Scroll. When you turn on auto scrolling the text will begin automatically scrolling. The text will do a smooth scroll. This means that the text doesn’t “jump” up the screen which makes it easy for your eye to follow. You can control how fast the text scroll by using the up and down arrows. You can make it go faster with the down arrow and slower with the up arrow.

If it weren’t for auto scrolling I don’t think I would be doing most of my reading electronically. For me, once I start reading a book with auto scrolling I forget that it is electronic. I start enjoying the book and forget about the medium that is being use to present the book. I have even found that reading electronically while riding a stationary bike is much easier than reading a paper book since I can do it completely hands free when I prop up my smartphone.

Happy Electronic Reading!

Stephen

Olive Tree is now releasing material in a format for the iPod! We started by posting 8 FREE Bibles and are working on eBooks and devotionals. The format for the Bible is very basic but easy to use. It is organized by book, chapter, and verse. By clicking on a book of the Bible you will be brought to a screen with chapter selection. After clicking on the chapter you wish to view, you will be brought to a verse menu for this chapter. Finally, by clicking on the verse you want to view, you will be brought right to this verse. One thing to note is that the iPod only allows 1000 4 kb notes. Therefore, the whole Bible will not fit on the iPod. Once you have downloaded the Bible you want, you can delete any books of the Bible to have just the ones you want on your iPod. We are hoping the iPhone has the same notes feature with the same formatting. If this is the case, we will release all this material for the iPhone as well! If you bring your iPod with you to work, school, or anywhere else like I do, this material could be a very valuable resource for you. You can read Scripture wherever you are! Anywyay, I think this could be a really cool thing.

You can download the Bibles for you iPod from Olive Tree’s iPod beta web page.