------------------------------------------------------------------- VerseWise Amiga v1.2 Copyright Bruce Geerdes 1991,1992 May 9, 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY VerseWise is a Bible display/search/output program for the Amiga. It opens a resizeable window on the Workbench screen and allows one to quickly jump to any scripture, search for verses containing one to ten specific words, and/or output text to an ASCII file. VerseWise uses the King James (or "Authorized") translation of the Bible and is freely distributable, as long as it is not done so for monetary gain. ------------------------------------------------------------------- DIFFERENT IMPLEMENTATIONS There are two implementations of VerseWise: a hard disk based full Bible, and a floppy disk New Testament. You need a hard drive to run the former, as it occupies about 2.2 megabytes of disk space, with its largest file just under 1.5 megs. The New Testament fits on one floppy. ------------------------------------------------------------------- SETTING UP New Testament: It's already set up. Skip to the next section! Full Bible: You should have three disks: VerseWise, Data1, & Data2. To set VerseWise up, all you need to do is copy the VerseWise directory from the VerseWise disk on to your hard drive. The files in the directory (at last count) are: VW(.info) VW.doc(.info) Install_text(.info) data.boo data.cha data.loo data.num data.ver From your hard drive, run the Install_text program and it will request the Data1 and Data2 disks when it needs them and create the "data.tex" file. Keep the disks as a backup. ------------------------------------------------------------------- RUNNING VERSEWISE You may start VerseWise from the Workbench by double-clicking on the "VW" icon, or if you are in CLI, typing "run VW". By running VerseWise two or more times and resizing and rearranging the windows you can compare two or more passages side by side. The only restriction is the amount of available RAM your system has. Each copy of the New Testament uses around 274k, while the full Bible needs about 511k per copy. (Your mileage will vary.) VW_LO, provided with the full Bible version, uses about 386k per copy, but is slower because it does more disk accessing. If you have very little free RAM, you may need to use it. The window will open a certain size and in a certain location. You may resize the window and place it differently. If you want the window to be opened such the next time you run VerseWise, choose "Save Prefs" under the "VerseWise" menu. ------------------------------------------------------------------- MOVING AROUND If you are using the New Testament version, and this is the first time you are running the program, you will start out at Matthew chapter 1, verse 1. (The beginning of each verse is marked by its chapter number [colon] verse number.) If you are running the full Bible version, you will begin at Genesis 1:1. When you quit, VW will save your position and place you there the next time you run it. The book you are currently in is displayed in VerseWise's window title, which changes as the first line of the window moves from one book to another. The end of one book and the beginning of the following book can be displayed in the window at the same time; whichever book the first line of the window is in will be displayed in the window title. The scroll bar in the right border of the window approximates where you are in the current book. (Note that sometimes the approximation is quite inaccurate, especially in the smaller books.) You may jump to the beginning or end of the the current book by dragging the bar to the top or bottom of its field, respectively. Or you may place it somewhere in between. To move through the text you may use the cursor keys or the mouse. Cursor up and down scrolls one line through the text backwards and forwards, respectively; shift-cursor up and shift-cursor down scrolls a full screen. You may also use the arrow gadgets at the lower-right corner of the window to move one or more lines, and click above or below the scroll bar to scroll a full screen. You may immediately jump to a specific verse by using the pull-down menu "Go to Verse" or by hitting right-Amiga (located to the right of the space bar) G. Most of the menu items have right-Amiga key equivalents; you can see what they are by looking at the menus themselves. A "Go to verse" requester should appear. You now have to enter the book, chapter, and verse you want to go to. If you decide you don't want to jump to another verse after all, hit the ESCape key (the most upper-left key on the keyboard) or use the mouse to click on CANCEL. A book name should be in a pair of brackets towards the bottom of the requester. That is the book you would choose if you hit RETURN/OK. If it is not the book you want to go to, start typing in the name of the book you do want. If you are spelling it correctly (upper or lower case does not matter here), it should appear in the brackets before you type the whole name. Hit RETURN/OK to choose that book. If the word "NONE" appears in the brackets the characters you've typed in do not correspond to any book of the New Testament or Bible, depending on which version you are using. Backspace, and try again. Or use the cursor up and down keys (or the requester's scroll bar) to scroll through the names of the books alphabetically. If you hit RETURN/OK and chose a book but want to back up and enter a different book, hit the ESCape key or click on CANCEL. You now have to enter the chapter number. The requester should now be displaying the number of chapters in your chosen book (1-# of chapters). The number in brackets is the default chapter, the one you pick if you hit RETURN/OK without typing anything in. Type in the chapter you want to go to and hit RETURN/OK. Or you can change the default chapter by using the cursor keys (or scroll bar), and then hit RETURN/OK. Cursor up and down will move the value by one, while shift cursor changes the default to the minimum and maximum value available in the current book. Moving the requester's scroll bar to the top and bottom of its field will also accomplish this. If you hit RETURN/OK and chose a chapter but want to back up and enter a different chapter, hit the ESCape key or click on CANCEL. You now have to enter the verse number. If you were able to successfully enter the chapter number, you should have no problem entering the verse; it works exactly the same. Information regarding the number of verses in the current chapter is displayed in the requester; type in the verse you want to go to, or manipulate the default number in the brackets using the cursor keys or scroll bar, and hit RETURN/OK. VerseWise should now jump to the book, chapter, and verse you specified. VerseWise also allows you to define a "bookmark" and jump back to it. To place a bookmark, choose "Define Bookmark" under the "Goto" menu. It will place it in your current position. Choose "Goto Bookmark" to return to this position. You may jump between two scriptures by placing a bookmark, going to another scripture, and choosing "Toggle w/Bookmark". Note that it is the other verse (the one you are not at) that is ultimately saved as the bookmark when you move on. ------------------------------------------------------------------- SEARCHING VerseWise allows you to search for verses which contain specific words. To do such searches you must define two things: the word(s) you want to look for and, if you do not want to search the whole text, the verses you want to search through. To define words, select the "Word (set)" option in the "Search" menu (or hit right-Amiga W). A requester window will appear. Near the bottom of the requester the word "NONE" is in brackets. Begin typing in a word you want to look for, and the word in brackets should change. Hit RETURN/OK when the word you want appears. (You may have to type in the whole word.) If you type in characters that do not correspond to any word in the Bible the word "NONE" will reappear in the brackets. Backspace and try again. Two notes: Upper and lower case *do* matter here -- "The" and "the" are two different words. Also, be aware that some of the King James spellings are different than modern day English. (Ie, "spake" instead of "spoke".) After you've selected the first word you want to look for, VerseWise asks you for Word #2. (And after that: #3, #4, etc.) After defining several words you can scroll through your list of words by using the up and down cursor keys, or by moving the requester's scroll bar. You can delete a word from your list by hitting the "DELete" key (located in the upper right side of the keyboard, next to the "HELP" key). You can change a word by typing in a new word. To add more words to your list, go to the end of the list by hitting RETURN/OK, the down cursor key, or by moving the scroll bar until "NONE" appears in the brackets. Then, enter the word. To tell VW that you're done defining the word(s) you want to look for, click on CANCEL, or hit RETURN/OK when the word "NONE" is in brackets. The requester will disappear. Your words are defined. Note that when you define multiple words, you are telling VerseWise to look for verses that contain all of the defined words. (Ie, "look for verses containing word1 AND word2 AND word3 etc.) Someday VerseWise will let you search for verses containing "word1 OR word2", or "word1 AND word2 OR word3", etc. By default the range covers all of VerseWise's text. (If you're running the New Testament version, this is from Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, while the full Bible is from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21.) VerseWise does not currently use any concordance files; it has to physically search the text. If you are doing a search through the whole text, this doesn't take more than a couple of minutes. However, the search time can be shortened if you have some idea of where what you're looking for is and you limit the search to that area. (Ie, if you are looking for something Jesus said, limit your search to the gospels, or if you are looking for something Paul said, Acts and the epistles.) To define the range of your search select the "Range (set)" option in the "Search" menu (or hit right-Amiga R). You have to enter two references: where you want the search to begin, and where you want the search to end. The requester displays what the range currently is, and asks you where to begin the search. (Entering in the scripture references works the same here as it did in the above section, "Moving Around".) After you have typed in the scripture to begin at, it asks you to enter the scripture to end at. The only difference here is that the chapter defaults to the last chapter in the book, instead of the first, and the verse defaults to the last verse in the chapter, since searches most often extend over whole books and chapters. (At least mine do!) A note: make sure the scripture you want to begin the search is *before* the scripture you want to end the search. Nothing catastrophic will happen; the program will just refuse to do the search. It will tell you when it does so for this reason. ("Range is ill-defined.") Once you've defined the words you want to look for and where you want to look for them, you are ready to do the actual search. There are two ways to do searches: immediate, or to file. Choose the "Next" option in the "Search" menu (or hit right-Amiga N). A requester will pop up detailing the search and the pointer will turn into a timepiece while the search is being conducted. If a verse containing your defined words is found, VerseWise will automatically jump there. (If not, a "not found" message will appear in the search requester.) When you want to find the next occurance of your defined words, hit "Next" again. (The "not found" message will appear in the search requester when there are no more verses to be found.) If you would like to back up to a previous find, choose the "Previous" option in the "Search" menu (or hit right-Amiga P), and VerseWise will jump to the previous find. (If you try to go beyond the first find, the "not found" message will pop up.) If you move away from the last found verse, for example you "Go to" another verse, or scroll it off the screen, and want to return to it, choose the "Current" option in the "Search" menu (or hit right-Amiga C). VerseWise also lets you direct a search to a text file. Instead of jumping you to each individual verse, you may have VW create a file containing all of the verses you are looking for. If you would like to do a search in this manner, activate "To file" in the Search menu. (If there is a check-mark next to it, it is activated.) Begin the search by hitting "Next". VW will count the verses it is outputting to the file and let you know when it is done. (Read more about outputting to a text file, and the options available to you, in the next section.) You may cancel a search by hitting ESCape/CANCEL at any time. A note: changing the word, the range definition, or the "To file" option resets the search. (Ie, it will start over at the beginning of whatever range you have defined.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- OUTPUTTING TEXT VerseWise allows you to output Bible verses as a text file. There are two ways to do this: by screen, and by range. I say "screen", but actually it saves what is in the current window. (Maybe I get the two mixed up since I usually run VerseWise with it filling up the whole screen.) To do this, choose the "Screen" option in the "Output" menu (or hit right-Amiga S). The pointer will change to a timepiece for a second while the text is being saved. It will be written to the specified file. You may also save a specific range of text to a file, from a couple of verses up to whole books. Choose the "Range" option in the "Output" menu (or hit right-Amiga O). You enter the range just as you do when you define a range to be searched. (For more details, read the above section on searching.) After the range has been defined, you are given a chance to change your mind. (If you specified the whole Bible, but do not want a *very* big text file on your drive, it would be a good idea to do so!) A requester pops up detailing the range you want to write to disk, and the filename you want the text to saved as. Hit RETURN/OK to have it continue, ESCape/CANCEL to abort. You can also hit ESCape/CANCEL during the output if you want to stop it. As when defining a search range, you must make sure that the beginning scripture reference of your range is *before* the ending scripture reference. If it is not, the range is "ill-defined" and VerseWise cannot use it. It will tell you when this is the case. The output filename defaults to "ram:vw_output.txt". You can change it by choosing the "File (set)" option in the "Output" menu (or by hitting right-Amiga F). I apologize for not having a fancy file requester here, but I saw it as kind of overkill as this is the only time one needs to define a file. VerseWise never has to load a file, or look for one, since all of the files it needs are in its current directory, and a file requester would add to its RAM overhead. "ram:" is the volume it's saving the file to, that is, the Ram disk. (You can tell it's a volume name by the colon after it.) If you want to save a file to a disk volume, change the filename to "df1:vw_output.txt" or "dh0:vw_output.txt" or whatever, depending on the disk you want to use. Or if you'd like to save the file in the same directory VerseWise is in, do not specify any volume: "vw_output.txt". Of course, in all these cases the filename does not need to be "vw_output.txt". It may be (almost) anything you like. There are three configurable options in the "Output" menu: Append, Formatted, and References. All of these default to "On". (Thus the checkmark next to them.) To turn them off, select them via the "Output" menu, and the checkmark should disappear. To turn them back on, select them again. (Sorry, there are no keyboard equivalents.) When Append is "on" the text you output will be appended to the specified file, with a blank line inserted between each output. Thus, if you run VW and, not changing the filename, do several screen or range outputs to disk, they will be appended to the file "ram:vw_output.txt". If you turn Append "off", each output to disk will overwrite the previous write, unless you change the filename for each one. The Formatted option determines how the text is written to disk. If you turn it "off", there will be no linefeeds (or carriage returns or whatever those things are) inserted into the text. Each scripture output will be on its own very long line. (Good if you want to input the text into a word processor and set your own margins.) When Formatted is "on", the output is written to disk exactly as it appears on the screen. Thus whenever the output is Formatted, the line lengths in the text file are the same as they are in the window. To change the line lengths of Formatted text, resize the window accordingly. I usually size it so there are about 60 characters on a line. This works out well for word processors and bbs's. If you turn References off, the chapter#:verse# will not appear at the beginning of each verse in the outputted file. This is useful if you also have the text unformatted and want to put the scripture in paragraph form in your word processor, without any numbers to clutter the text. All of the Output options you choose (including the filename) may be saved by choosing "Save Prefs" under the "VerseWise" menu. ------------------------------------------------------------------- COPYING & PASTING There are no internal functions in VerseWise to copy scriptures and paste them directly into word processors or terminal programs. Using only VerseWise's current functions, you must output text to a file and load it into your word processor or terminal program from there. However, there are several utilities that other people have written which allow you to use the mouse pointer to copy text from one window (ie, VerseWise), and paste that text into any other window (ie, a word processor or a terminal program). Two such utilities are "PowerSnap" and "Osnap". Check your local sources of public domain and shareware software for these programs, and others like them. ------------------------------------------------------------------- A FINAL NOTE Well, this is it. I apologize if my instructions are unclear in any points. Writing documentation is not my favorite pastime, as those who had to live with the docs I released with the Gospel version (v1.0) of VerseWise know. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, want to volunteer to rewrite the docs, or whatever, drop me a line! I can be reached, at least for the next six months, at: Bruce Geerdes 10700 E.Dartmouth #N111 Denver, CO 80014 God bless you as you study His word, Bruce