, so maybe others have the same need. Or maybe you're just fed up with Windows 11 breaking everything after every update .This guide is designed around setting up a dedicated machine for BibleWorks, don't do anything mentioned here on your primary PC.
And once again, if you're not technical, you will need someone to assist you.
Microsoft has a thing called "Remote Desktop" which is a protocol that allows you to remotely manage a Windows session. It also happens to be cross-platform, so you can remotely manage a Windows machine (and therefore, BibleWorks) from: macOS, Linux, Windows itself (obviously), legacy UNIX, Plan 9, OS/2 Warp... and pretty much anything that implements the protocol.
RDP Clients
- macOS: now called "Windows App" https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windows-a ... 3466?mt=12 or the beta which does not require an Apple ID https://install.appcenter.ms/orgs/rdmac ... op-for-mac
- Linux: many, but my choice is Remmina: https://remmina.org/
- Windows: natively included (really only necessary if you wanted to manage a really old version of Windows on newer, or vice versa. This is why it's still possible to remotely control Windows 11 from Windows 98, for instance -- although going the other way around can pose some restrictions as Microsoft continues to change Windows 11).
- OS/2 Warp: FreeRDP https://ecsoft2.org/freerdp-client-os2
- Plan 9: rd https://github.com/Plan9-Archive/rd
Configuring RDP
Same process applies, install Windows if not already present, install BibleWorks & activate it. Then you'll want to actually enable RDP:
Once your client is set up (keep in mind you will want to assign a static IP to your newly set up Windows machine, whether that's setting a static address in Windows itself, or whatever you're using for your DHCP server), you need to set the clipboard mode to bidirectional to allow copying out of and back into BibleWorks from your host machine. Optionally playing sound "on this computer" if you need audio (I do not use BibleWorks' audio features so I leave it disabled to preserve network bandwidth).
For the display options I reduce the colour quality to the minimum allowed (technically it can go lower with 3rd party RDP clients but 16-bit is the lowest allowed by Microsoft's 1st party clients), I also use the "optimise for retina displays" option -- which basically just allows native per-pixel scaling (which is something I need to bypass Windows' awful linear mipmap mode scaling, more on that below if you're interested).
Then it's simply specifying the credentials you set up in Windows on your "BibleWorks" machine with the IP address, and away it goes.
Actual Retina Display Optimised (Without Linear Mipmap) + Dark Mode
It's too complicated to explain here how Microsoft royally messed up on designing DPI scaling on win32 binaries (and how they keep changing their standards -- OS/2 and CDE on any UNIX already had these problems solved but I digress), it requires a lot of crazy work to not have a program blurry with linear mipmap filtering and/or chromatic aberrations from Microsoft's equally awful "Cleartype". If you're technical and these things bother you (and you have a mac and a wonderful Retina display), here are the details...
#1 as mentioned prior, you need RDP's "retina display mode enabled"
#2 you may need to run this registry key (save it as a .REG and run), because Microsoft tries to be smarter than you and correct older Windows applications by once again, forcing linear mipmap blurring:
Code: Select all
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations]
"IgnoreClientDesktopScaleFactor"=dword:00000001
You'll need to also increase the cursor size manually (choose the third option for the largest cursor size):
Then once you're in BibleWorks under the view menu, you can specify a much larger scaling percentage, I'm using a whopping 215 (this does of course shrink the icons and some other things, so if you need those -- I don't -- it may hamper your workflow). To simulate the dark mode and also get rid of the chromatic abberations from Microsoft's Cleartype, I set Windows 10's colour filter to "Greyscale inverted" (you can find it in the standard Windows 10 settings). You will then need to set the colour scheme to "BW Yellow" so that the interface completely inverts itself.
If you want to collapse some of the empty space on the top of BibleWorks' UI, you can use Autohotkey to 'erase' some of the HWND elements. I wouldn't do this unless you really know what you're doing and want to save realestate. I won't be sharing the more aggressive Autohotkey script I'm using because, as you can see, it removes a lot, but here's one that's a bit more friendly -- when you launch it, pressing F1 will then engage the HWND removal, and vice versa, of course being Autohotkey you can automate it without pressing a key even (but I won't cover that here):
Code: Select all
F1::
{
WinSetStyle("^0xC00000", "A") ; Toggle WS_CAPTION
}
If you *are* using Windows 10 1809 and also using the greyscale inverted filter like I am, Microsoft has a bug in RDP that they didn't fix until later builds, whereby, the filter is enabled but stops being applied after the machine reboots. To mitigate this you need to create a special toggle PowerShell script:
Code: Select all
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\ColorFiltering" -Name "Active" -Value 0
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 500
Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\ColorFiltering" -Name "Active" -Value 1Code: Select all
schtasks /create ^
/tn "ToggleColorFilterAtLogon" ^
/tr "powershell.exe -NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -File \"C:\Scripts\toggle.ps1\"" ^
/sc onlogon ^
/rl limited
If you want BibleWorks 10 to automatically launch when you log in, run this .REG:
Code: Select all
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"BibleWorks10"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\BibleWorks 10\\BW1000.exe"If you want your BibleWorks machine to stay on 24/7 as I do, you will need to run these commands in CMD:
Code: Select all
powercfg -change -standby-timeout-ac 0
powercfg -change -standby-timeout-dc 0
powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-ac 0
powercfg -change -hibernate-timeout-dc 0 Blocking External Internet Access
If you want your BibleWorks machine accessible to your machines on the local network, but not reachable from the internet.... there are many ways you can do this but it's unfortunately pretty advanced. With that said it can also be done with Windows' Firewall, or as they call it... "Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security". Assuming you're using the standard "Class C" 192.168.0.0/24 subnet:
1. Allow Outbound LAN Traffic:
Under 'Outbound Rules' create a 'New Rule...'. Choose the "Custom" Rule Type. Leave the default option of "All programs". Leave the default option of "Any" for protocols. Under "Which remote IP addresses does this rule apply to? put 192.168.0.0/24. Leave the default option of "Allow the connection" on Action. Leave the default selection of all three rules selected on Profile. Finally name it anything you want, like LAN Outbound.
2. Block Outbound WAN Traffic:
Under 'Outbound Rules' create a 'New Rule...'. Choose the "Custom" Rule Type. Leave the default option of "All programs". Leave the default option of "Any" for protocols. Under "Which remote IP addresses does this rule apply to? specify these two ranges:
0.0.0.0 - 192.167.255.255
192.168.1.0 - 223.255.255.255.
You will have to manually paste in the start and end for both. Under action choose "Block the connection". Leave the default selection of all three rules selected on Profile. Finally name it anything you want, like WAN Outbound Block.
The outbound rule blocks all ranges that aren't 192.168.0.x. It has to be done in this way as Windows 10 is finicky with how you define rules *while* still simultaneously connected over RDP. To test you should still be connected over the RDP session, and accessing any websites should result in no connection anymore.
That about does it for what I have set up. I only typically connect to my BibleWorks machine from macOS (since I have a Pro Display XDR and it's really nice to see how sharp the Greek and Hebrew fonts are). It runs in its own window and practically looks like a native macOS app if you didn't know it was an RDP session. Which by the way, since RDP uses CPU rendering for its visual output, this means you can have that much of a larger visual output than probably what the GPU was intended to output. So old machines work quite well, even for "Retina" scaling. Just look at now nice and sharp!!!
