What would you like to see in BibleWorks 10?

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Originally Posted by brainout

1a. EASIER ACTIVATION. The current system is a royal pain. It's bad enough you have to type in each long module code, let alone go through activation per module code also; and of course not all of them allow internet activation, but you aren't told which ones; you're only given ALL internet or ALL manual, and the process for manual is unbelievably complex. Seems unfair to the BW staff to use individual emails for activation. If one has the download, or has the DVDs, can't that be enough 'proof', just to get the thing activated and up-and-running? Especially, since the individual module codes have to be typed in, as well?

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BW9 already has easier activation than previous versions. You do not have to type in all your access codes. You just copy them from the e-mail which BW sends you when you buy them, and paste them all at once onto the activation window in BW, and once you click the right button to activate them, you're activated in seconds. Or, if you are upgrading, BW9 automatically searches to see if you owned modules previously, and those codes are imported into BW9 at activation. The only people who have had problems are those who uninstall and reinstall multiple times. That raises a red flag at BW, that perhaps someone is passing around a single copy of BW to multiple users. That's when the phone call clears things up.

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Originally Posted by brainout

1c. BETTER DEFAULTS. Who can read Arial font, now?

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I can read Arial just fine, and I'm no spring chicken.

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Originally Posted by brainout

It's thin and unreadable, the bane of using Windows; default font should be darker, thicker, more like Cambria or some other easier screen-to-read (best one is Comic Sans, for reading onscreen).

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To each his own. BW allows you to change fonts, if you like.

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Originally Posted by brainout

Who needs that 'Daily Light' prompt as the default? Why isn't the default 'off', allowing the user to turn it on?

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The programmers find it salutary to look at a daily dose of God's word before they get down to programming. Maybe we all do.

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Originally Posted by brainout

Why are there defaults ON for accent/vowel point searching, and other things that are rarely useful? And the 4.0 style search box is still faster to use when changing Bible books in a search, than the default offered now. Also, why should the default for updates be every 48 hours, checked?

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What would you suggest as the alternative? When a new release of BW comes out, there are always small bugs, and the programmers fix them promptly, so checking for updates every other day makes sense. After a release has been out for a few months, you wouldn't have to check for updates that often.

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Originally Posted by brainout

3. Get rid of the problems listed above in 1a-1c. Also, please allow the user to use different colors or different 'something' to distinguish the buttons now in BW9. They look too much alike, now. Also, allow the user to CHANGE THE HIGHLIGHT COLOR when marking out text with the mouse. The default slate blue obscures the text. It's a nasty feature of Adobe Reader, and a nastier feature of BW, because slate blue on black makes for unreadability. Adobe never learned that. BW, can. (Honestly, I don't understand this trend of light grey text on glare white or glare blue backgrounds in websites and MS Office products, or dark gray text on dark backgrounds, too-thin font faces yet huge glaring pictures that tell you nothing. World has gone mad.)

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My eye doctor call what you have presbyopia (older eyes). When we were younger we used to be able to distinguish small contrasts. The older our eyes get, the more contrast we need.

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Originally Posted by brainout

4a. Make setting up Favorites easier: back in BW5, you could clone a Favorite and build on it. The whole setup is hard to do over and over and over. Since redoing that is a programming hassle for you guys, then restore the ability to clone a previous Favorite, to make a new one, rather than just 'Display_01' appearing anew. Better still, can't the Favorites be spun out into their own configuration file, and then be ported in? If like me you owned several full copies of BW, it's a real pain to have to do all those Favorites over and over per machine (as the sole user of them).

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Again, BW9 already fixed this. Once you have set up favorites, BW9 can copy them into its BW900.ini file. Also, when you are setting up favorites, when you start at new one (Display_01) it automatically starts with the contents of the favorite which was open previously. Isn't that the same as a "clone"? So, before you start a new Favorite, be sure to open an existing Favorite which is close to what you want the new one to contain.

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Originally Posted by brainout

the folks who buy it because of my videos have a lot of problems learning it, so they need these changes even more than I do.

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That is why BW has so many videos to introduce how to do what it can do. And that is also why we have this forum, so get tips, if the videos didn't show you how to do what you want to do. But I suspect that if you suggest some functions to be included on future videos, you can probably get those included.
Mark Eddy

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Originally Posted by Mark Eddy

Again, BW9 already fixed this. Once you have set up favorites, BW9 can copy them into its BW900.ini file. Also, when you are setting up favorites, when you start at new one (Display_01) it automatically starts with the contents of the favorite which was open previously. Isn't that the same as a "clone"? So, before you start a new Favorite, be sure to open an existing Favorite which is close to what you want the new one to contain.

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This is true; but for managing BW on multiple computers (e.g., my desktop and my laptop), it would be handy if there were an export/import favorites feature. As it is, I have to edit BW900.ini to copy favorites from one setup to the other one. Unless there's an easier way I just don't know about!

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Originally Posted by brainout

Why is that so important? Forgive me, I don't see the difference between what you're saying, and what I get when only one version is in Browse mode. Paragraph divisions are artificial, too. Just ignore all the verse markings, and go by syntax. Or am I missing something? Thank you for any time you spend in reply!

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The subject here (for those who've lost their index to this absurdly long thread) is the display of the text in the Browse Window or Browse tab of the Analysis Window with each verse as a separate paragraph when in single-version mode. Brainout, I don't know how you're getting this mode without this verse-by-verse display. Heaven knows, I could have overlooked a setting.

It's difficult to just ignore the verse markings, since each verse is a separate paragraph. This becomes even more of a problem when copying and pasting multiple verses into word-processing software, for instance. Since the program clearly knows where the paragraph divisions are (since it is possible to use the Browse Window Configuration Options to show paragraph markers), I'd think it would be fairly easy to include a configuration option to just have paragraphs display as paragraphs, with verse numbers shown within them.

To be sure, paragraph divisions are also artificial. But they are also part of most modern translations, and reflect important translational decisions, which I think should be represented in digital displays of them.

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Originally Posted by DavidR

To be sure, paragraph divisions are also artificial. But they are also part of most modern translations, and reflect important translational decisions, which I think should be represented in digital displays of them.

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I agree with David. The request is not to put paragraphs in the Greek texts, but they are part of each translation. How a translations breaks up the English translation into paragraphs is important information and is part of each of those translations.

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Originally Posted by jfidel

I agree with David. The request is not to put paragraphs in the Greek texts, but they are part of each translation. How a translations breaks up the English translation into paragraphs is important information and is part of each of those translations.

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In fact, even the paragraphing in modern editions of the Greek NT (and LXX for that matter) reflects conscious editorial decisions. "Discourse segmentation" (as the UBS Greek editions have taken to calling it) is an important area of exegetical analysis. An option to shows these paragraphs, rather than the verse-by-verse paragraphing, would allow users to see these decisions and compare them between editions. While one might not always agree with the contemporary editors on this, it's worthwhile to have the text displayed as they have arranged it. OTOH, an option to show a continuously flowing Greek (or Hebrew) text, with no divisions at all between verses or paragraphs, would show the text more as ancient readers saw it.

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Originally Posted by Michael Hanel

Officially, there is no immediate sign of a BW10 release. Generally, BW won't really announce a new release until after beta-testing because once a new release is announced people will stop buying and wait until the next version to come out instead. Since BW isn't a monster company, it is greatly hurt by those periods, which is why they minimize the time as much as they can.

Unofficially (I have no insider knowledge on this, this is just speculation), I would guess that BW10 will come out next year sometime, but my guess is later in the year rather than earlier (I'm still of the mind that 3rd quarter of the year is a good time to release because of SBL and such, but I'm just an armchair speculator). I have no real foundation for this claim, it's just my hunch. The owner has said he's working on BW10, but hasn't dropped any hints about a release, so I just think if you were in need of BW, it'd be foolish to wait because you could be waiting for quite a while.

Though I must say, I'd be more than happy to be wrong on this one. It's always exciting to see what a new version has to offer :-)

[This post has a little bit more of the context for my guess (based on release cycles)]

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I have been a BW user since BW 6. I have felt that each version has been a definitely good improvement over the previous version. Based on the quote you linked to, I am wondering if BW10 will be less about new features of the program and more about making it run on Windows 8, tablets, etc. I am very happy with BW9 but am still going to use a desktop for the foreseeable future on Windows 7 so a new version that is geared toward more "platforms" would be of less interest to me. I would tell anyone that is not running Windows 8 already that BW9 is a very good edition that I'm sure they would not be disappointed with. :)

I think it unlikely that a version update would focus on expanding platforms as the most prominent feature. I am currently using BW9 on a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet2 running Windows 8.1. On a homebrew desktop under Win 8 Pro 64 bit. And a Lenovo X220 laptop wifh Win 7. The program works very well in each of those environments already.

One only needs to look through this forum to see how commited the company is to making the current version run on a Mac.

As a long term user I would be very surprised if BW 10 does not contain more than a few major enhancements.

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Originally Posted by DavidR

In fact, even the paragraphing in modern editions of the Greek NT (and LXX for that matter) reflects conscious editorial decisions. "Discourse segmentation" (as the UBS Greek editions have taken to calling it) is an important area of exegetical analysis. An option to shows these paragraphs, rather than the verse-by-verse paragraphing, would allow users to see these decisions and compare them between editions. While one might not always agree with the contemporary editors on this, it's worthwhile to have the text displayed as they have arranged it. OTOH, an option to show a continuously flowing Greek (or Hebrew) text, with no divisions at all between verses or paragraphs, would show the text more as ancient readers saw it.

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If you don't want to see each verse as a paragraph, specify a range on the command line. The verse numbers still do show up (inconspicuously). You must be in "display multiple versions" mode -- if you use single version display mode it goes back to breaking at verse change.

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Originally Posted by SkipB

I think it unlikely that a version update would focus on expanding platforms as the most prominent feature. I am currently using BW9 on a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet2 running Windows 8.1. On a homebrew desktop under Win 8 Pro 64 bit. And a Lenovo X220 laptop wifh Win 7. The program works very well in each of those environments already.

One only needs to look through this forum to see how commited the company is to making the current version run on a Mac.

As a long term user I would be very surprised if BW 10 does not contain more than a few major enhancements.

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Thank you for your response, SkipB. It is certainly good news that it is already running on Windows 8.x. I assume that you are using it in Desktop mode in Windows 8.x

BibleWorks 9 does run in desktop mode. Even Microsoft Word 2013 switches to desktop mode to run. I have added Classic Shell to my installations. This puts a Win 7 style start button and menu on the desktop. In my style of work all the programs that do the heavy lifting run on the desktop. But Windows 8.x has proven to be more stable than 7. I have gone 3 or 4 weeks without rebooting my desktop at times.