Questions

Installation

Commandline instructions give errors

I ran the command line instructions, but got errors - can you help me understand what I did wrong?

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Documents and Settings\User> cd "C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Downloads\scricheck-0.2.9"
C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Downloads\bibledit-1.6>
./configure '.' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Reply: When installing it on Windows, install Cygwin first. See Bibledit's Windows installation instructions. Then execute all commands from within the Cygwin terminal.

There is no acceptable C compiler in $path

This happens when you did not install a C compiler.Installing Bibledit from source requires a C compiler. This compiler is part of development tools. The installation instructions for Linux, or for Macintosh, or Windows, give instructions on how to install such development tools. If you follow these instructions, the problem will be gone. For example, on Windows, you need to install package "gcc" in Cygwin.

Does Wine run a program that is already on my Windows partition?

Yes, it does.

Let's say to run the Outpost, normally you would type

wine "c:\Program Files\Bibledit Windows Outpost\bwoutpost.exe"

If the Outpost is already installed on your Windows partition in a dual-boot system, you could type, for example

wine "/windows/c/Program Files/Bibledit Windows Outpost/bwoutpost.exe"

The "windows/c" part depends on your configuration.

General

The log says: CRITICAL **: database disk image is malformed

This message can be either from the text or the notes database. It has been seen in cases of malfunctioning hardware, such as unreliable memory. The solution is to solve the hardware problem first, and restore the text or the notes from a backup.

Bibledit won't start anymore

Try starting it from a terminal, and see what happens. In the terminal type:

bibledit

If it gives a segmentation fault, then there is a problem in your configuration. A simple way to get Bibledit running again is to delete the file ./bibledit/settings and ./bibledit/configuration/configuration.xml. You will loose all your settings, but not your data, and Bibledit should start again after that.

If you wish to have this problem solved, before deleting your configuration files, make a bug report, pack all your data in a gzipped tarball, and attach this file to the bug report.

To go to the home directory, type

cd

To pack everything in a tarball, type

tar -cvf bibledit.tar .bibledit

Then compress the tarball:

gzip bibledit.tar

The resulting file is named bibledit.tar.gz and can be attached to the bug report.

If the problem is not a segmentation fault, but it shows nothing at all, then the bibledit.log file might give a clue. It is in the temporal directory. View the logfile to see what went wrong.

Bibledit is frozen. How to solve that?

Question: I am completely stopped in my work. I opened a project, but the book of Philemon freezes Bibledit completely. When restarting it, the screen comes up, but none of the menus or buttons work. I cannot scroll. The only button that works is the one to exit the program (which brings up a box giving me the option to force-quit).

Answer: You can change the project from the commandline. In a terminal, type this:

bibledit --general-configuration --write --key project --value testproject

Next time you start Bibledit, it will open project "testproject" - any name will do here.

To change the whole configuration to default values type:

bibledit --general-configuration --reset

Project

When importing data in legacy encoding, can Bibledit use a TECkit map?

Bibledit uses iconv, the standard utility on Linux to convert between various encodings.

Iconv supports a huge amount of standard encodings. Iconv does the same functions as TECkit does.

Bibledit does not at present support a TECkit map, but that is going to change in the future.

At conversion time the user sees how the text is going to look, and can change encodings until the result looks right. If there are a couple of characters not right, the search/replace functionality quickly fixes that.

Printing

Printing does not work and the log file says: Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console

Checking in the System log the messages are given:

Message: Starting to print the references
Message: (document [system-id file:/tmp/bibledit/references/document.fo]
Message: (compile
Message: (masters
Message: (sequence-master [master-name blank-page])
Message: (sequence-master [master-name odd-page])
Message: (sequence-master [master-name even-page])
Message: (sequence-master [master-name text]))
Message: (sequence [master-reference text]
Message: (static-content [flow-name header-blank])
Message: (static-content [flow-name header-odd])
Message: (static-content [flow-name header-even])
Message: (flow [flow-name xsl-region-body])))
Message: (format
Message: (sequence [master-reference text]
Message: (flow [1])
Message: (static-content [1]|header-odd|)))
Message: (generate [output-format pdf][1]))
Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console Could not get a file descriptor referring to the console
Message: Ready printing the references

Printing seems to be working somehow, but there is something strange happening, because it cannot get a file descriptor referring to the console.

This has been seen when the GNU Java virtual machine was used, not the one from Sun. The solution is to exactly follow the installation instructions for installing Bibledit.

Note that newer versions of Bibledit no longer allow you to use the GNU Java virtual machine while installing.

Bibledit produces .pdf output, but how do I get .html files?

There are a couple of converters on the market, that convert .pdf files to .html. Use a search engine and look for "PDF to HTML", including the quotation marks. This will give you a number of programs to try out.

Where are the fonts on my system?

Bibledit accesses the fonts on your system, and knows where they are. It writes the fonts it uses to the file xep.xml in your XEP directory, where you installed it. If you open that file in a text editor you'll find your font locations.

Bold does not show up in a printout

Question

Printing a Bibledit project to pdf format, using ArialUnicode and SIL Doulos for it, I had the following problem:

* Feature Bold does not show up,

* Feature Italics shows up.

Trying the same with Open Office Writer and those two fonts, I found out, that both do not show up neither in bold nor in italics.

Answer

SIL Doulos does not have bold, and XEP is so clever that though SIL Doulos does not have italics either, it makes it from it.

Try Charis SIL, that does have bold, and works fine with me.

The footnote caller is detached from the word it belongs to

If the USFM code is properly written, the footnote or crossreference caller is always connected to the word it belongs to.

This is an example of proper code:

Joseph was a good man\f + \ft Or “kind man”.\f*

The following two examples of code will cause the footnote caller to detach from the word it belongs to:

Example one:

Joseph was a good man \f + \ft Or “kind man”.\f*

Note the space between "man" and the "\f".

Example two:

Joseph was a good man
\f + \ft Or “kind man”.\f*

In USFM a new line is equal to a space, hence there is a space between "man" and the "\f" here also.

Many older projects started a new line for each marker, also for the footnotes. This needs correction in the current system. All note markers (footnotes and cross-references) should not start on a new line, but follow immediately the word it belongs to (without even a space).

Note that in newer versions of Bibledit the \f ... code for footnotes is no longer visible - only the note itself is visible.

The footnote caller touches the next word

This problem occurs when there are many footnotes per page, and the footnote numbering restarts every page.

Bibledit does not know how many footnotes go in one page. Yet it has to assign space for the footnote caller, and normally gives it the space of one character. This is because normally there are not too many footnotes on a page, so the numbering stays within 1 to 9. However, if there are more footnotes per page, and the numbers go as high as 10 and up, it needs the space of two characters. As said Bibledit does not know this, because the formatter, XEP, lays the text out on the pages. This is where the problem starts.

To solve this, give the footnote caller more space. This can be done in the stylesheet editor. Tick the option "Allow double space for the note caller". This setting is found while editing the Footnote, marker \f.

The same story applies to the Crossreference. The setting can be made while editing the \x marker.

If the caller at the bottom of the page touches the footnote text, then you can increase the left margin of the footnote text. In the stylesheet editor, edit the left margin of the Text, marker \ft, and if necessary also for the Paragraph Mark, marker \fp.

Same applies to the Crossreferences. Make the setting under marker \xt.

BART does not scroll with Bibledit

There can be various causes for this.

Cause 1. Has Bibledit Windows Outpost been installed?

Cause 2: Does it say "Windows Outpost: Connected" in the logfile?

Cause 3. When BART runs under Wine, did you install Bibledit Windows Outpost in Wine too? Or when you installed BART in CrossOver Office, e.g. bottle "win98", did you install the Outpost in the same bottle too? The wine installation constitutes a separate Windows machine, and each bottle in CrossOver Office also constitute each their own Windows machines. The system BART uses for scrolling requires that it be accessed from the same Windows machine. This means that if you installed BART in a certain bottle in CrossOver Office, e.g. bottle "win98", then for scrolling to work, the Outpost needs to be installed in that same bottle too.

Cause 4: Did you set BART to receive references?

Cause 5: If you used CrossOver Office instead of Wine, then you need to start the Outpost manually through the CrossOver menu. It needs to be started each time before you start Bibledit.

BibleTime does not scroll with Bibledit

Read some more info on BibleTime.

View the Logfile in the Help menu to ensure that there is a line that says "BibleTime: Connected", and that there are no "BibleTime: " lines saying anything wrong. If everything is right, then scrolling should occur.

Bibledit uses "dcop" to send scrolling commands to BibleTime. This can be seen working by ticking menu Preferences / Debug. Then go to another verse, view the logfile, and see a "BibleTime: dcop ..." command there. If this command is there, then Bibledit's job has been done, and if there is still no scrolling, the problem lies with either dcop or BibleTime. You can verify this by executing the dcop command from a terminal and see whether BibleTime scrolls, e.g. by typing

dcop bibletime BibleTimeInterface syncAllVerseBasedModules 3John.1.8

Export / Import

It says that the SWORD compiler was not found

The SWORD compiler is part of the SWORD API. Bibledit uses this compiler to export a project to SWORD format.

The most likely problem is that you did not install SWORD from source, but from a binary package. Binary packages do not always install the compiler. If you install SWORD from source, the compiler will be installed too.

The compiler used is a program called osis2mod. If the compiler has been installed, but Bibledit still cannot find it, the problem might be that the compiler has not been installed in the program search path. Type

echo $PATH

in a terminal to see the program search path.

While exporting to SWORD, it says that the process was interrupted because the logfile became too large

The problem lies with the compiler included with the SWORD API.

When compiling projects that use segmented verses, like 4a and 4b, the compiler enters an infinite loop and keeps writing the same line to the logfile. This would cause the logfile to completely fill your harddisk if this were allowed to continue. Bibledit therefore continually monitors the size of the logfile. It it grows too big then it interrupts the compiler, and gives the error message you've seen.

Exporting the project to SWORD format still partially succeeds and you can see in GnomeSword or BibleTime how much of your project came through.

Viewing the System log will show the problem, but it may take a while to open because of the sheer size of the logfile.

The bug in the compiler has been reported to the SWORD developers.

While exporting to SWORD, all text within my speech markers disappears

All text between the speech markers disappears when exporting to SWORD. E.g.

And Jesus said: <<I am he>>.

Everything between << and >> disappears.

This is a bug in the current SWORD compiler. The bug has been reported.

A workaround is to use the Unicode speech markers, e.g.

And Jesus said: «I am he».

Segmented verses like 1a do not show in SWORD export

SWORD currently does not support segmented verses, like verse 1a. To prevent problems Bibledit just takes any "a" or "b" out from the verse. SWORD needs to be updated to support this.

Marker <some marker> does not show properly in BibleTime

Question: I have used the \mi formatting in the list of names in Acts 13:1. The output to BibleTime lists the \mi paragraphs on separate lines, but the font is changed from my default font for that language, and there is no indenting. Under the form for editing the style for \mi, I don't see a place to select the font. And the default indenting of each line at 6 mm from the left seems right. So is this a problem of what Bibletime can display? (That might explain the lack of indenting, but it seems that the font should not change.)

Answer: For any marker, not only the \mi one, the output Bibledit generates for the Sword compiler can be seen in the temporal directory/sword_osis_input.txt. In this case, that of the \mi marker, it can be seen that no indenting information is passed to BibleTime, nor any font information.

This implies that the font problem is a problem of BibleTime, and that the indenting is not done because it does not get the information needed. If somebody knows how to pass indenting information to BibleTime, pls. let the programmer of Bibledit know and he can put that information in.