Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Last month, we installed BibleTime and downloaded a set of books to use in it. This month, we’ll continue by looking at how to configure it and start looking at the basic functionality.
Configuring BibleTime
Once we’ve finished with the initial installation of BibleTime, and we’ve done our first session with the Bookshelf Manager to install some books, there are some configuration options to get it working the way we want. From the main screen, go to Settings and click Configure BibleTime. The program will default to Display options:
I was happy with the default options, so I moved on to the Desk configuration by clicking Desk in the left panel:
Ah, now we’re getting to some of the more useful and interesting options. You can choose a default Bible and Commentary, select a Lexicon and a Daily Devotional, and pick your Hebrew and Greek Strong’s lexicons along with Hebrew and Greek morphological lexicons if you’re an advanced scholar. It’s obvious this application can be used for serious research and cross referencing! I, of course, chose to default to the Bible in the (original) Klingon Language (just kidding, I chose the New English Translation), selected C. H. Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Daily Readings for my Daily Devotional, and left the other options (that I’m unlikely to use) on their default settings.
Once I was done with these options, I clicked Fonts on the left panel to see what typeface options I had:
If you want something other than the program’s defaults (and I did), you have to select ‘Use custom font’ in the upper right. Once you click that, the formerly grayed-out options become available. Select English (or your language of choice):
I decided to go with a Caslon font, which is one of the most readable fonts out there, Roman (which in this context simply means non-italic), and chose a 14 point size to make the default display text a little larger for my tired, old eyes. After configuring the fonts to my liking, I used the navigation pane on the left to choose a Bible. To open a book, let’s say the King James Version of the Bible, and the book of Revelations, as a way to check the fonts we just configured, scroll up and down in the left pane. Click the triangles to ‘fly out’ the available sub-options, then double-click the book you want to open. Use the navigation buttons at top to navigate to the first chapter of Revelations. I was very satisfied with the readability using these font choices:
You can also customize the program’s shortcut keys, but I’m personally always inclined to just learn a program’s defaults, so I left those options as is.
Main Program Window: Navigation and Parallel Display
Now, back to the BibleTime main interface screen:
Let’s back up a bit and get a little more specific on navigating the bookshelf. Up top, the first set of arrows pointing up and down lets you select the book you want by advancing or retreating one entry (example, from Genesis to Exodus, or from Exodus backwards to Genesis). After selecting the book, its name will show up in the box immediately to the right. To the right of that, there is another set of up and down arrows/triangles that let you select the desired chapter. Just to their right is another set to select the desired verse. However, since these arrows go back and forth only one entry at a time, it is usually easier to use the arrow keys beneath the text box to bring up a menu that allows you to select the exact book, chapter, and verse desired.
Continuing to the right in the interface, there are two backward/forward keys that let you navigate your history the same way a web browser would. Click on the small arrow keys next to those buttons to open a menu allowing you to go back and forth more than a page at a time. Next, there is a Bible icon that allows you to change the selected book via a drop-down menu.
The next icon invokes a great tool: it opens a new Bible’s text in a parallel window to the window you already have open. The windows will also scroll in unison to make it easy to compare one version to another. Here, I’m comparing the King James Version to the original Klingon (come on, you all had to know I was going to do this):
Qapla’!
Next month: BibleTime Part Three.