BibleWorks on Macintosh computers?

[pdwinva]

The BibleWorks website indicates that BibleWorks "can and does" work well on Mac computers, by means of VirtualPC.

Are there any Mac users out there who can expand on that? Has it worked well for you? Are there big problems that you've encountered? Or little ones?

Thanks!

[MTan]

From http://lists.topica.com/lists/BibleW...?mid=909756942


Hi,
We installed and did a quick benchmark running BW 6 on (as I recall) a
1GHz G4 Mac Notebook under Virtual PC and the performance was equivalent
to an 800MHz Penium III (the same benchmark was done on a 700MHz PIII,
hence the 800MHz number). (This absolutely blew me away, by the way. We
used an involved ASE search)

When VPC is available for a G5 I will do some real benchmarking. (All
the above was trying to do was to determine if BibleWorks ran at a
tolerable speed. This benchmark convinced me to buy a G5.)

Thanks,
Roy

[pdwinva]

Any chance you know, or I could find out, what version of Virtual PC was used in this test, and what Microsoft OS?

[MTan]

Sorry, I don't know, but perhaps other readers have tried it and can share their results here?

[deut3221]

I was a Windows and BW user who bought a Mac and installed Virtual PC hoping to use BW "as usual." To make a long story short, I love my Mac, but I now also own a snappy Windows laptop, primarily so that I can use BW.

The limitations of VirtualPC are as follows: the fonts are distorted in the dispaly; you cannot copy-paste across platforms; and it is deathly slow to startup.

The biggest limitation of a Mac in the theological world is the limited transportability of fonts. Unless you use Unicode, no one can read what you write. If you use native Mac fonts, they are not cross-platform transportable. However, BW has chosen to distribute their fonts at no charge, so everyone (even Mac users) can read what you write with the BW font.

My suggestion: run Mac apps on a Mac. Save your money and buy an inexpensive PC (you can get plenty of speed these days for a very reasonable price) SO THAT you can run BW.

My 2 cents. Feel free to disagree...

-steve

[Roy S. Miller]

Hi,
I just (finally) received Virtual PC for Mac 7.0 (needed for a G5) with Windows XP Pro and have installed BibleWorks 6.0 under it.

Power MacG5 2Ghz (X2) 2GB memory

Comments:
1) Installing VPC, etc. was essentially a no-brainer and much faster than expected.
2) The full BibleWorks 6.0 (base + all options) installed in 4 minutes from the time I completed the installation menu. I then 're-used' my .ini file from my PC
3) Very preliminary benchmarks (Comparing with a 3.08GHz Compaq Presario 3050 with 1GB memory) gave performance equivalent to >1->2GHz Intel PIV performance. A long ASE search and a long command line search
4) I don't see any display problems
5) Trivial response is acceptable or better (<1 seconds. Ideally should be <.3 seconds).

[Glen Johnson]

Yesterday I installed BibleWorks on my new PowerBook G4. Everything worked fine in the Virtual PC environment. Success!

Today I transferred to my PowerBook a Word file on 2 Corinthians 10. The file contains lots of Greek material. Unfortunately, the Greek text appeared in an English font as gibberish. Can someone help me to install the BibleWorks fonts in the PowerBook domain rather than in the Virtual PC domain?

Glen Johnson

[deut3221]

Just put the specific BW fonts in both the Font Folder on the Mac and on the PC. Sould work just fine.

[Jonna]

Yes: I have successfully loaded Bibleworks using Virtual PC 7 on my G5 Mac.
It works fairly well. You will need to load some type of word processing on Virtual PC (such as WORD or Word Perfect) if you want to use the Hebrew and Greek fonts.

For example: you can copy English into to Appleworks or OFFICE for MAC, but this will NOT work for Hebrew or Greek fonts.

Thus, if you want to use Hebrew and/or Greek fonts (for a paper), you will need to load a WINDOWS word processing program (such as WORD or Word Perfect). I loaded Word Perfect, and I was able to print without a problem.

Question: I am at a regular PC right now, and somehow -- I am in "verse-by-verse" mode. I am just getting started, and I want to get it back so that I can view PASSAGES of Scripture, not just verse-by-verse mode. Any idea how I can do this?

Jonna

[deut3221]

Hi Jonna,

Just select "View/Browse Mode" or if you have the cursor in the main BW window, hit the "B" key to toggle between verse and browse mode.

Good luck.