Import

Introduction

Bibledit can import existing Biblical text. It imports various formats of the texts. Text is normally imported into a project using the menu, File, Project, Import. Set all the options there. Ensure that everything says "Done". Then clicking OK will import the text.

USFM

Bibledit can import USFM text.

BibleWorks

Bibledit can import text that has been exported from BibleWorks. This is how to do it: In BibleWorks choose Tools - Export Database. Export the Bible of your choice to a file and save it in Text format. Then do the Import in Bibledit. In the "Import text" dialog, set the type of the file to import to "BibleWorks".

Notes on importing Hebrew text from BibleWorks. This works fine, but when converting the text to Unicode during import, the encoding "Windows-1252" gives best results. The screen fonts needs to be set to "Bwhebb". This font should be copied from the BibleWorks installation and installed in Linux. If the llines of this visually ordered Hebrew text are too long, then use "Tools - Line cutter for Hebrew text" to shorten the lines.

Mechon Mamre Hebrew

Mechon Mamre has a good quality Hebrew text, with vowels and cantillation marks.

To import this Hebrew text into Bibledit, do this: Go to http://www.mechon-mamre.org, and download the Hebrew Bible with cantillation marks, see the offline resources section, the individual HTML Bibles in ZIP files. This gives a file ct005.zip. Unzip this file. The individual files can then be found in subdirectory c/ct in the directory where you unzipped the file. Point the Import text dialog to this directory, and set the import type to Mechon Mamre. Then finish the import. The screen font can be set to "Ezra SIL" or similar.

Online Bible

Data from the Online Bible can be imported into Bibledit. This can be done in two simple steps. 1. Export the data from the Online Bible. And 2. Import the data into Bibledit.

As an example we are going to import the commentary written by Matthew Poole into Bibledit.

Export the Poole commentary from the Online Bible. Certain options need to be set in the Online Bible so that only the text is exported that is wanted, without extra bits. The exported file is in Rich Text Format, and should look like the sample below.

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Genesis 50:24 (Poole)

Ver. 24. God will surely visit you, i.e. deliver you out of this place, where I foresee you will be hardly used after my decease; or, fulfil his promised kindness to you, as that word is used, Ge 21:1 Ex 4:31. There is a double visitation oft mentioned in Scripture; the one of grace and mercy, which is here meant; the other of justice and anger, as elsewhere.

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In the example above, the important thing is that there is one line that shows the reference, and below that any text follows. The line with the reference starts with the name of the book in English, then a chapter, a colon and the verse, and finally the name of the commentary in brackets. Bibledit can only import files if these are in this format.

The data is in Rich Text Format, and needs to be converted to plain text. Conversion can be done with several word processors. Next the file "poole.txt" should be stored somewhere, e.g. in the home directory. From there it can be imported normally.

Be aware that after clicking on the OK button in the import dialog, importing the whole of Poole, or even a few books, can take a long time due to the inefficient implementation of some of the code. It may seem that the system hangs. But this is not the case.

Notes

Hidden files, that is filenames that start with a dot, are not considered for import.

When importing files from the Online Bible, it looks for the names of the books in the English language. When exporting a book in that language from the Online Bible, it will get the names of the books right. But when exporting a book from the Online Bible in another language, it will use other names for the books. In Dutch, for example, the book of Acts is called "Handelingen". Thus Bibledit won't recognize the book of Acts unless it be informed that the book of Acts is called "Handelingen". In the import dialog, when files from the Online Bible are imported, there is an option to use unusual book names. Tick that option to enable this. Then click on the button belonging to it, to enter the unusual names that should be used to recognize books. Once through click OK in the dialog, and hopefully this time more books in the unusual language are recognized. These books should be selected to now be part of the books to import. In a full Bible there are 66 books. So if less than 66 books are now recognized, yet a full Bible is imported, that means that some books have got the wrong name. After fixing any such mistakes, all books should be recognized.