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Editing and Navigating Bible Text
Before any editing can be done, create a new project and add books to it. See also the Project Properties dialog. Or of there is an existing project, open it.
There is no need to save the text, because Bibledit takes care of that.
Standard Format Markers are markers that are put in the text to indicate the book, where a chapter starts, the verse, titles and so on.
A marker always starts with a backslash () at the beginning of a line of text in the editor. The most commonly used Standard Format markers are:
\id Identifies the book
\mt major title (if only one level is used. If more than one used:)
\mt1 major title, level 1
\mt2 major title, level 2 (equal to secondary title \st, but \st is no longer in use)
\c chapter
\s section heading
\p paragraph
\v verse
Here follows a part of the book of John.
\id JHN
\mt2 The Gospel according to
\mt1 John
\c 1
\s The Word became flesh
\v 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Explanation of markers used.
\id JHN
Identifies the book as John
\mt2 The Gospel according to
A major title, level 2. When printed it will have a font just a bit smaller than \mt
\mt1 John
A major title, level 1. When printed it will have a big font suitable for such a title.
\c 1
Indicates that chapter one starts here.
\s The Word became flesh
This is a section heading, and will be printed in the text as a heading, usually in bold.
\v 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This is the text of verse one.
More information on USFM is available.
All project data is stored in the data directory.
As long as you stay in the same chapter, you can undo and redo any changes made. See menu Edit, or use the keyboard accelerators.
All Bible notes can be inserted by choosing the appropriate style.
A new window will come up, where you can set what will be inserted.
The numbering can be set to automatic, or no numbering at all, or a certain character.
Further you can set whether to automatically insert the current reference in the footnote. If you do insert it, then you can set whether to include the chapter number, and the verse number, and what the separator between them will be. A suffix can be entered too. It will show how this is going to look in the text.
The size of the text entry or entries can be set using the "Size" arrows.
It is possible to save a certain footnote configuration in a template. The "New" button will make a new template, and the "Delete" button will delete the current one. If no template name is given, the default one will be used. Data is saved in a template only on pressing the "Ok" button.
The same things apply to endnotes and crossreferences.
A Bible note can be a footnote, an endnote, or a crossreference. This type can be changed. To do that, place the cursor somewhere in the note to be changed. Choose menu Edit / Bible note, and set the new type, and then press OK.
The numbering of the note can be changed in the same way. One can for example change from automatic to manual numbering, and vice versa.
Bibledit has good support for the \fig marker. Pictures are inserted manually, following the USFM standard.
At printing time, Bibledit looks for the picture file in various ways. If an absolute path is given, then it will look for the file there. If a relative path is given, it first looks in /pictures, then among Bibledit's template files.
According to the USFM standard, the picture size can be set to "col" or to "span". In addition to that, if the picture size has not been set, Bibledit uses the intrinsic size of the picture. The "span" property is not yet supported at this time. All other properties are.
The text is displayed in formatted form. This means that the raw USFM code is hidden, and instead the code is formatted and is displayed in that form.
If the user wishes to view or edit the raw USFM code, there is a setting for this in menu View / USFM code. If this menu entry is ticked, the raw USFM code can be edited. If the tick is removed it reverts to the normal formatted view.
In the formatted view, the stylesheet will determine what part of the text is formatted and what is left unformatted. If the stylesheet contains all the styles in the document, then everything will be formatted. If a style is in the document, but not in the stylesheet, than that particular style will be shown unformatted, but the rest is still formatted. In this way, by using various stylesheets with more or less styles, Bibledit can be more or less formatted. In this way the user has a lot of flexibility to fine-tune the view. Some styles will always be unformatted.
There are keyboard accelerators for moving to the next or previous verse, chapter or book. There is also a toolbar with controls for the same purpose.
If going to a next verse, but Bibledit is already at the last verse of a chapter, it will then go to the first verse of the next chapter. Same for the next chapter, if Bibledit is at the last one of a book, it will go to the first one of the next book.
Left on the toolbar there are two arrows. The left arrow takes you to the place in the Bible that you have recently viewed. The right arrow will take you back to where you came from. You can click an arrow several times, if you have viewed enough places.
There is also a keyboard accelerator for going to any Bible reference. This is Ctrl-G. The "G" stands for "Go to". It accepts many different forms of a Bible reference. If the editor displays Matthew 1:10, for example, and the user enters "11", it will go to the next verse. If "2:3" is entered, or "2 3", then the editor will go to Matthew 2:3. If "Gen 1:10" is entered, it will go to Genesis 1:10. And so forth.
Bibledit can remember the most recent verse per chapter, and the most recent chapter per book. This is supposed to assist with the navigation through the Bible and make it faster. It should be enabled in the User interface options.
To move the keyboard focus to a text editor press F5.
Shift+F5 takes you to one of the tools windows. Pressing it repeatedly focuses all open tool windows in sequence.
Ctrl+F5 goes to the project notes window.
Repeatedly pressing the Tab key moves between all windows counter-clockwise, and Shift+Tab moves the focus between the windows clockwise.
Moving with the Up/Down arrow key to a certain verse and then use Alt-Left arrow key jumps back to the verse you started to move from. If you use the Up/Down arrow key several time you can use the Alt-Left arrow key also several times. The Alt-Right arrow key works too. It goes in the history to the next in a whole series of moves.
Visit the web page for Bibledit-Desktop at bibleditdesktop.org