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As there are some drastic changes between versions, it would be helpful to have two different versions running of Bibledit.
This is possible, but not recommended for production work, as they will be overwriting each other's configuration.
Do it this way.
Install the newer version according to the instructions.
When installing the older version, do this:
./configure --prefix=/home/joe/older make sudo make install
Then to run the older version, type this:
/home/joe/older/bin/bibledit
Joe stands for the user's name.
You can fully configure in which order Bibledit displays and prints the books. This can be done in menu, Preferences, Books. Drag the books in the order you desire, and then click OK to save the settings.
Normally Bibledit stores its data in subdirectory ".bibledit" of the user's home directory, e.g. in
/home/joe/.bibledit
If it is desirable to have Bibledit store its data elsewhere, the solution is simple:
1. Move the current .bibledit directory to the new directory.
2. Create a symbolic link from .bibledit to that new directory.
Bibledit has several areas to work in.
In Menu / GoTo there are hotkeys mentioned to move between areas.
On some distributions F5 (Text Area) and Shift+F5 (Tools Area) work fine, but Ctrl+F5 (Project Notes Area) will not work. It leaves the cursor in the area it is.
What works fine, is the
* Tab key: moves between all areas counter-clockwise,
* Shift+Tab: moves cursor between areas clockwise,
with the exception text area to references area. In this case Shift+Tab has to used twice, as using it once goes to the verse box of the toolbar.
In the example below we're going to learn how to write a table of contents for a project consisting of several books.
The table of contents comes in the book called Front Matter. Therefore, add this book to the project.
Each book that should go into the table of contents should have a USFM indicating this. Therefore, go to chapter 0 of each book and add the \toc2 marker to it. For example, in the book of Genesis, chapter 0 might look like
\id GEN \h Genesis \toc2 Genesis
Do this for all the books.
Then print the project, and be sure to include all the books, including Front Matter. The table of contents will be there.
If the versification system or language you need does not come with Bibledit, then you can create a new versfication system on the wiki of Scripture Checks. Once it is on that wiki, it usually makes it into Bibledit after about a week. This is the simplest way for you.
You can also create your own language or versification system and add it to Bibledit yourself. To do that, take an existing versification system textfile or language textfile from /usr/share/bibledit, edit it, and save it in the data directory, subdirectory templates.
Restart Bibledit, and you'll notice it creating new templates.
Notes.
The versification files start with vrs_, the mapping files with map_, and the language files with language_. It is important to keep that first bit, else Bibledit won't recognize the files.
If the name of a template you added is the same as the name one of the templates that come with Bibledit, your template will be taken.
As Bibledit evolves your versification system or language may not be compatible with a newer version of Bibledit. To keep it compatible, it is recommended you create your data on the wiki of Scripture Checks. A more important reason for sharing your data on the wiki would be that by doing so you would help others too in that they benefit from the work you've already done.
This can be done through menu Tools, then Bible notes mass update. Tick "Crossreferences", and leave the action to take as "Make no changes but give statistics only". After clicking OK it will give the number of crossreferences in the project.