# Introduction

&bibletime; is a powerful Bible study tool written for the &kde; environment on the Linux operating system. It is based on the Sword library, which provides the back-end functionality for &bibletime;, such as viewing Bible text, searching, bookmarking, etc. Sword is the flagship product of the Crosswire Bible Society.

&bibletime; is designed to be used with documents that have been encoded in Theological Markup Language (ThML) and General Bible Format (GBF). These markup languages are focused on the requirements of religious texts. Complete information on the supported document formats can be found in the developers section of the Sword Project, Crosswire Bible Society.

Over 200 documents in 50 languages are available from the Crosswire Bible Society. These include:

Bibles

  The full Bible text, with optional things like Strong's Numbers and footnotes in the text. The Strong Numbers hot link to the entry in Strong's Hebrew Bible Dictionary or Strong's Greek Bible Dictionary. Bibles are available in many languages, and include not only modern versions, but also Ancient texts like the Aleppo Codex (Hebrew), and the Septuagint (Greek).

Commentaries

  Commentaries available include classics like John Wesley's Notes on the Bible, and Luther's Commentary on Galatians.

  With the Personal commentary you can record your own personal notes to different parts of the Bible.

Lexicons

  Lexicons available include: Robinson's Morphological Analysis Codes, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

Dictionaries

  Dictionaries available include Strong's Hebrew Bible Dictionary, Strong's Greek Bible Dictionary, Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language 1913, Nave's Topical Bible.

Books

  Books available include "Imitation of Christ", "Enuma Elish", and "Josephus, the complete works"

Additional documents are being added to the &sword; repository frequently, so visit often.

## Changes

Please read the file Changelog of the sourcecode package if you are interested in more detailed changes.

A listing of the features included in the current package can be found in the sourcecode at CVS log for `bibletime/bibletime/ChangeLog`

### Changes for &bibletime; Release 1.3

&bibletime; version 1.3 provides a number of bugfixes and stability improvements. You will also find a number of changes to the appearance of bibletime. This is a partial list, for a more complete list, see the changlog.

#### Main window

Main index was reorganized, sorting the modules by type of module, then by language.

Bookmarks are now stored in an XML file, but the old format can still be imported. After upgrading an existing installation the old bookmarks are placed in the "Old bookmarks" subfolder.

Drag&Drop works now for more than one item.

Search default Bible and search open modules options added in the search menu.

#### Searchdialog

Major redesign of the user interface, reducing the number of tabs to two (search and result). Features have been moved to the appropriate tab.

#### Display windows

Separated now in "read only" and "write only" windows. Write windows can be opened by right mouse button menu in the main index on the Personal Commentary module (or any other RawFiles module).

#### Options dialog

A custom font can now be specified for each language. The default font is KDE's default font, and will work for most modules.

## ToDo

We have lots to do. Because we are a very small team of active developers it's very hard to get reasonable results in a short time. If you are interested in helping the &bibletime; team, please contact us at Sourceforge &bibletime; home page. Information can also be found at the &bibletime; homepage.

The &bibletime; project needs programmers / developers, translators, reviewers, testers, and prayer warriors. If you can help with any of these tasks or think up another, please join us. Without your help, &bibletime; will develop very very slow and it will take a very long time until you get a full-featured Bible study tool.

## Motivation

Our desire is to serve God, and to do our part to help others grow in their relationship with Him. We have found a gaping hole, in that there has been a total lack of user-friendly Bible-study software available for &Linux;-based computers. We have developed &bibletime; to fill that void. We have striven to make this a powerful, quality program, and still make it simple and intuitive to operate. It is our desire that God be praised, as He is the source of all good things.

> James 1:17, NASB

> Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

God bless you as you use this program, and may He be glorified by the work of our hands!