18 replies to this topic

[APsit190]

This is perhaps one of the most unusual posts I've ever done, and perhaps the reason is, as the above title shows, to write my own book for e-Sword.

This is perhaps one of the most interesting things to consider for some of you who do use e-Sword, and would like to share your work. And so in consideration of writing your own book/resource for e-Sword, which is the best way to go?

Well, I tend to think its dependent on the type of book/resource one wants to write that will determine the type of tool/Application you want to use. There are three ways your work can be created, and they are:

• Your favorite Word Processor. That could be MS Word, Corel WordPerfect, or some other one.
• ToolTipTool NT (affectionately known as T4). A really handy and powerful application for creating e-Sword resources/books which will do a lot more than most applications.
• e-Sword's Topic Note Editor. Perhaps this is one of the least stated ones, and one that many would not really consider.

As I mentioned before, the type of book, and what I mean by that is its dependent on the resource type:

• Is it a dictionary
• Is it a Commentary
• Is it a Devotional
• Is it a Theological/Teaching type book
• Is it a Novel and etc.

All these will determine the which application (program) to use.

T4 will do all of the types that I've mentioned as there are quite a lot of automated processors in this program that cannot be done in either a Word Processor or in e-Sword's Topic Note Editor.

With all that said, creating your own work for e-Sword, irrespective of the tool/application you are going to use requires planning, and a lot of research for what you may want to write about. And then its getting all of these things together in some semblance of order so that you can know where goes what and etc. Its here, I believe that e-Sword's Editors comes into their own simply because you have everything right at your finger tips. And I don't think you can have it any handier than that.

If its a Dictionary, Commentary, Devotional, then the best tool one can use is without question T4 simply because e-Sword editors cannot create those kinds of resources. But if its just an ordinary book to read, then e-Sword really does come in handy for what you may want to write simply because everything is right there handy for you to do your work.

I've been thinking about this for some time because I wasn't too sure of which way to start, and the more I thought about it, I looked at issues of syncing data (information) in e-Sword, and the most common sense approach with this is to use e-Sword's Topic Note Editor.

e-Sword, over the years, has become a very versatile program, and its one of the things that makes it really good to use. The ability to paste directly into the Topic Note editor from any of the resource types makes work a lot simpler and straight forward. The only downside to this is basically that tool tipping Scripture references is still just a one at a time manual operation, and if that could be automated, then that would be great.

e-Sword is no-longer a minor contender in the Bible Study software stakes. Its now regarded as a very advanced Bible Study Tool, and with the capabilities of being able to handle graphics, columns, and Tables (I don't know about Spreadsheets though) makes this program an Author's delight.

So, when it comes down to writing your own book, how well do you think e-Sword could help in your work as a tool for writing it?

Blessings,



e-Sword Topic Note Editor in Page View

[BH.]

...
I've been thinking about this for some time because I wasn't too sure of which way to start, and the more I thought about it, I looked at issues of syncing data (information) in e-Sword, and the most common sense approach with this is to use e-Sword's Topic Note Editor.
...

Lets say you have a "book" with 70 chapters, and 1500 Bible references. Is the Topic Editor still the best choice?

[APsit190]

Lets say you have a "book" with 70 chapters, and 1500 Bible references. Is the Topic Editor still the best choice?

Hi Brent,
With a book that has 70 Chapters and 1500 Scripture references, is dependent on the type of data that is required. If there are detailed charts and other data, such as requiring statistical analysis, that goes with it, I think I would use a very powerful word processor such as MS Word or WordPerfect, or even Open Office Writer, save it as a series of rtf files, and then load it up to T4, and then deal with the Scripture references that way If it didn't require any of that kind of data, then I would do the work in e-Sword, simply because I have everything at my fingertip, and I don't have to switch programs. But when it comes to tool tipping the Bible references, I'd load the topx file to T4 and deal with the references that way.

As I said regarding e-Sword's Tool tipping method,

The only downside to this is basically that tool tipping Scripture references is still just a one at a time manual operation ...

So, I don't think that I'm such a glutton for punishment where I'm going to tooltip all the references one at a time So therein I tend to think common sense prevails.

From what the editors were like way back in the days of 5,6,7,8,9 versions, the 10x editors are a massive improvement. I tend to think (as some have commented in the past) that tool tipping Bible references really has to be improved in e-Sword. Just having it to to doing it just one at a time is crazy, just to say the least.

Primarily, my thing is that e-Sword, in the way it has advanced, is now a really good program for doing Biblical research. The modules that are now available (and that has been made more possible as a result of your program) for e-Sword has really lifted this program up. I don't think e-Sword will ever be able to do what T4 can do, and neither should it, and there is no comparison between the programs. That said, the Topic Note Editor is still a very good program to even be able to write a book in despite the pain in one's proverbial backside of the tooltip method being slow and arduous. And I'm really serious that something should be done about it.

The beaut thing is that when it comes to Strong's numbers, well, no work there required at all. Just type it in, e.g., G123 or H123, and hey presto! Up pops the tooltip to the Strong's numbered dictionary selected. Can't get it any easier than that

I know when it comes to T4, that you're naturally biased toward it, and I don't blame you for that. After all you wrote the program, and you put a lot of heart into it. Its your baby, so what else can one expect. So I reckon you have to be congratulated for it. And on that note, I'll just end it here.

Blessings,

Edited by APsit190, 13 November 2012 - 07:55 PM.

[BH.]

e-Sword is a very nice program. It's user interface is simple and easy to use. That thing that in my estimation however, that makes it great for Bible study is not its editor features. It is that it is open enough so we the end users, can expand it with material we want to add and study. e-Sword's editor is fine for small projects, or a project you are writing from scratch. T4 was written to enable much larger projects which often involve public domain works.

[APsit190]

e-Sword is a very nice program. It's user interface is simple and easy to use. That thing that in my estimation however, that makes it great for Bible study is not its editor features. It is that it is open enough so we the end users, can expand it with material we want to add and study. e-Sword's editor is fine for small projects, or a project you are writing from scratch. T4 was written to enable much larger projects which often involve public domain works.

Hi Brent,
On that basis I whole heartedly agree with you. And mostly my projects are from scratch, and the one I'm currently working on is a study in Ephesians. I'm working on both my cellphone and on my computer. The pity is I can't sync the files, so the work I do has to be manually typed in from both ends if I want the data to match.

The only exception I have in that regards is the Maori Bible and using SQLite Manager. Although its slow and arduous work, I'm glad that I'm doing it that way because by doing it one verse at a time I'm actually picking up more textual errors than one can poke a stick at, and mate, its no fun. I think if I used a word processor or T4, I reckon I would have missed a lot of these errors simply because it would have been way too much to try to get through one big heap of data. But that's just me in the way I can or can't handle things, and Maori isn't my strongest language. I speak German way better than Maori, and my German is totally lousy, so you can imagine just how good my Maori is .

I think also where T4 really comes in on its own is starting a dictionary or commentary project from scratch, as in one's own work. Mind you it could be done as a Topic Note file and then converted to an Reference Book file, but somehow having it as a dictionary or a commentary resource would be far better.

Admittedly, I don't use T4 often as most of my work is done in e-Sword, and I'm not doing Public Domain resources. But of what I have done in it is relatively small, and stuff that was from scratch. My view is that its quite an ingenious program, and has a lot of features in it that makes things look like magic. I actually hacked one of the dll files for it and looked at the dialogs you have in it. The tx17.dll file. The hacking program I used is called Resource Hacker, a small program written in Delphi (Pascal). I didn't write that program as both Pascal and Delphi are not my strong suites.

I've attached a screenshot of the hacked into dll file.

Blessings,

Attached Files

•  tx17dll in Resource Hacker.jpg   332.42K   34 downloads

Edited by APsit190, 14 November 2012 - 09:48 PM.

[APsit190]

To those who marked down my initial reply to Brent...

I really don't give a toss as to your opinions. I didn't bag or put down T4. I think every program has its place, and has its uses. As a professional software developer, I don't use all the programs I write, I also use others. I know the weaknesses and strengths of programs because I test them as well.

Testing software is very complex task using different types of test, e.g., White Box and Black Box testing of code and etc., are only two of the myriad methods of testing. Alpha and Beta testing is also quite complex in where (for all testing methods) reports have to written.

For the record, T4 is a very excellent program, and for Brent, who is not software developer by profession, to venture on to something like this and to create a program of this magnitude has to be congratulated, and I take off my hat to him. T4 is a program that surpasses what most professional software houses have produced, and this includes Microsoft. And having looked under the hood of T4 and seen the work that went into it, it even beats what MS Word or any other word processing program can spit out.

I mentioned T4 in my article because it is a tool that totally belongs with e-Sword as a Resource creation tool. The capabilities it has for creating Bible, Dictionary, and other resources really show just how important this tool is. That said, for starting work from scratch one really doesn't need T4, and not everyone on this board as it either.

T4, on the popularity of download steaks, has only had to date 980 downloads, and out of that probably there are only 30 or 40 users. Of those users, maybe only about 6 to a dozen users would be using it for resource creation as such we have seen from Josh Bond and others. So taking that into consideration, of the total members of this board, it would come to less than 2% of members use T4 for resource creation. So when it comes to writing a simple straight forward book in where the overwhelming majority of people are not T4 users and may not even want to use it, then e-Sword's Topic Note editor actually does make a very viable tool.

Blessings,

[Josh Bond]

T4, on the popularity of download steaks, has only had to date 980 downloads, and out of that probably there are only 30 or 40 users. Of those users, maybe only about 6 to a dozen users would be using it for resource creation as such we have seen from Josh Bond and others. So taking that into consideration, of the total members of this board, it would come to less than 2% of members use T4 for resource creation. So when it comes to writing a simple straight forward book in where the overwhelming majority of people are not T4 users and may not even want to use it, then e-Sword's Topic Note editor actually does make a very viable tool.

Blessings,

I checked and T4 has had 443 unique downloads. After clicking view all downloaders, you can page through the downloaders. Each page has 20 downloads. There's 22 full pages, plus a partial page of downloaders.

The dll file you viewed is apart of the Text Control distribution--Brent didn't make that. The resulting text is the Windows GUI instructions for placement of graphical elements. It's not actual source code.

[david psalms]

I mentioned T4 in my article because it is a tool that totally belongs with e-Sword as a Resource creation tool. The capabilities it has for creating Bible, Dictionary, and other resources really show just how important this tool is. That said, for starting work from scratch one really doesn't need T4, and not everyone on this board as it either.

I agree with your first 2 lines. i may not fully with your last line. I made all my modules with T4. believe me not a single one was made without using T4. I think it has got all the required features even for some one who wants to start their work from scratch for eSword, either it be a book or study guide. in my opinion making a book does not call for advanced features than what is available in a normal word processor like MS Word, unless you want to make it for different platforms/reader devices available in the market. as you said T4 is better than word processors available today. many times i find it doing tasks much faster than MS Word.

I give 5 star rating for T4.

So taking that into consideration, of the total members of this board, it would come to less than 2% of members use T4 for resource creation.

I want you to consider a point here. Not all the members of our board are resource makers. most of them download and use the resources created by others. we may have some enthusiastic people also who get inspiration and would like to make a module. but if you see the stats on the home page only 80 uploaders are there. they are the ones who can give us good feedback about the tool usage. sometimes the inability of the user who can not leverage the features available in a tool also makes it non usable. comparing it with total nos of members in the site Vs downloads may not give us the correct usage information. the usability of the product is more important than no. of downloads. unless i download i can not check the usability/content. once i check the content if it is not usable there is no way i can go back and erase my download count.

i do not know this point is related or not. but i want to share this. please do not go by numbers especially in the kingdom of GOD. all our forefathers wrote this much literature as inheritance for us by dedicating their lives, with an aim of saving/winning souls for GOD. only that resource which became a tool or enables a child/minister of GOD to win souls for the Kingdom will get highest rating in the sight of GOD.

You have started a very good topic on this. it is very exciting to see new books coming up exclusively for eSword by eSword user community. so far many of our modules were from already published works. as you are already in the process of making one, may i request you to post the limitations or features you feel need to be there in T4. this will be helpful for future versions. we will be thankful if you can share best practices and lessons learnt too in book making.

Edited by david psalms, 15 November 2012 - 12:34 AM.

[patchworkid]

Hi,

I use TNT because it is dynamite at making modules. And at times I use Microsoft Word because of the Wild Cards (Find and Replace).

Almost everyday I use Tool Tip Tool NT. It is an excellent (five stars) software. [Thanks BH for your hard work].
I mainly use the Topic editor to see the scripture popups, Strongs, convert the topic to Reference Topic. (mainly to check my work).
I rarely use the Format Scripture Tool Tip in the Topic Editor. I rather copy and paste into TNT and back . I like to have a lot of scripture popups so for me to use the Format Scripture Tool Tip would take a long time.

If anyone is making modules (new beginners or old) and do not tool tip your scripture reference, Please learn to use Tool Tip Tool NT (found here: http://www.biblesupp...vision-2122012/ ) . It will help you in making modules, even if it is just for yourself. You will get more out of your module with scripture popups.

Thanks
Patchworkid

Edited by patchworkid, 15 November 2012 - 02:41 PM.

[LarryG]

....but i want to share this. please do not go by numbers especially in the kingdom of GOD. all our forefathers wrote this much literature as inheritance for us by dedicating their lives, with an aim of saving/winning souls for GOD. only that resource which became a tool or enables a child/minister of GOD to win souls for the Kingdom will get highest rating in the sight of GOD

YES! "...in the sight of God." That is where we can see the anointing flowing.

Tool Tip Tool NT. It is an excellent (five stars) software. [Thanks BH for your hard work]. I mainly use the Topic editor to see the scripture popups, Strongs, convert the topic to Reference Topic. (mainly to check my work).

I rarely use the Format Scripture Tool Tip in the Topic Editor. I rather copy and paste into TNT and back . I like to have a lot of scripture popups so for me to use the Format Scripture Tool Tip would take a long time.

If anyone is making modules (new beginners or old) and do not tool tip your scripture reference, Please learn to use Tool Tip Tool NT. It will help you in making modules, even if it is just for yourself. You will get more out of your module with scripture popups.

Yes! I do likewise and find it very easy when making modules accurately. Fully agree with your assessment.