This is the Xiphos Bible site. The home page was very appealing as opposed to this one. The homepage made a reference to reporting any misuse of software such as having viruses. I clicked onto downloads to see if they are free or not, but it took me to another website: the open source Sourceforge site.
Previewing the software it looks similar to the Online Bible I also checked. Again it is still not equal to Bibleworks8, but it could easily get the job done. It looks like a good and free way to set parishioners up with online resources. I have noticed in my short time working in the program that it offers several dictionaries and commentaries that could be very beneficial to parishioners. One strength I am finding is that they include the NET translation (for free with limited notes; for a cost to get the full notes version). You can obtain hundreds more modules here (from the Sword Project whose modules work in Xiphos) or here.
After being able to download this, it seems like a great resource. This is a website I will suggest to many people interested in online Bible resources.
As long as it works, this looks like a helpful, reliable, wonderful resource to start with.
(JakeW)
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Howdy. A couple of us from the Xiphos team are trying to figure out what web pages you've been reading. Notably, the word "virus" appears nowhere under http://xiphos.org/, as far as we can tell, or remember.
ReplyDeleteSword Project modules work in Xiphos because Xiphos is one of the several frontend applications developed under The Sword Project umbrella. This can be seen both by its presence near the top of our Links page, and by Xiphos' presence in software listings at http://crosswire.org/, along with BibleTime, MacSword, PocketSword (for iPhone), and others.
Any similarity to Online Bible is utterly accidental. Xiphos (née GnomeSword) is more than 10 years old, though development has been dramatically faster in the last couple years.
The download link sends a Windows user to SourceForge because that's the distribution point for Xiphos' Windows installer. This is pretty ordinary, really -- a great deal of freely-available software is distributed this way.
The expected manner by which modules are installed in Xiphos is to use its integrated module manager, which knows about several standard module repositories by default, including CrossWire's and our team's. The user is not expected to go down the far more painful path (as you suggest) of surfing a module repository, downloading individual modules, and hand-installing them. There's a reason why the integrated module manager exists.
Along with NET's availability for Sword Project applications, we (CrossWire) also have permission to distribute a free ESV module. Beyond this, overall Bible modules for Sword Project applications now number more than 250 in 112 languages, the widest language coverage of any Bible software anywhere, as far as we know.
Regards,
Karl Kleinpaste
Xiphos project admin
Thanks for the clarifications, Karl. (I wasn't quite sure what my student had meant by the virus deal either...) Glad to hear of your development plans!
ReplyDeleteBTW, Xiphos is one of the few Bible-study software programs for Linux (just in case anyone's looking....).
ReplyDeleteI'm a long-time user of onlinebible, but can't get it to work under ubuntu/wine. I am pretty impressed with xiphos, except for the Module Manager, it just doesn't work under 14.03 (Trusty Tahr). Manual installations are really straightforward though, so not a deal breaker. I really like that I can display English, Greek and Hebrew in parallel, with Strong's to the side. This is a tool.
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