2012 October Archive - Laridian Bible Software

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Archive for October, 2012

PocketBible 2.0.6 Available on the App Store

Posted on: October 31st, 2012 by Craig Rairdin 14 Comments

We’ve just been notified that our latest update to PocketBible (version 2.0.6) has been approved by Apple. It should become available in the App Store over the next 24 hours.

We apologize for the delay getting our iOS6-compatibility fixes into PocketBible. We ran into a couple of issues getting our update past the Apple approval process. In the end, being forced to address those issues caused us to find a couple tricky bugs that wouldn’t have turned up otherwise. But the whole process ended up taking longer than we wanted.

The complete list of new features and bug fixes is below, but a couple are worth highlighting. First, this version adds support for the Greek New Testament. You should find the SBL Greek New Testament in your list of downloadable books in “Add/Remove Books”. There are instructions in the built-in Help for enabling the Greek keyboard so that you can do searches in Greek.

Several bugs introduced in iOS 6 have been circumvented. In particular, you may have noticed PocketBible would only read the first verse on the screen to you when you asked it to start reading. This has been fixed. And it’s not really a bug, but PocketBible will now take advantage of the full height of the screen on the iPhone 5. (This wouldn’t have been a problem except that Apple “lies” to our app when we request the size of the iPhone 5 screen, apparently to maintain compatibility with apps that aren’t as clever as PocketBible by making them think they’re running on an older device.)

I believe we’ve finally fixed the problem of books and voices disappearing when memory runs low. Apple changed the way they do this a couple of times over the last year or so and kept defeating our efforts to preserve our files. We think we have it figured out now.

Finally, PocketBible now requires at least iOS 5. The latest version of the development tools only produces ARMv7 binaries and there are no ARMv7 devices that don’t support iOS 5. We’d like to support older versions of the operating system, but we’re limited by what the development tools support.

What’s new in this version?

Support for the SBL Greek New Testament including display, searching and copy/paste.
Added “Find Selection” to the Selection menu. Rearranged the Selection and Context menus to put more frequently used items closer to the top.
iOS 6 compatiblity including:
- Fixed a bug where PocketBible would stop after one verse when speaking the text
- Addressed rotation issues
- Added 4″ Retina launch image and support for the full height of the new iPhone 5 screen
Bug fixes including
- Fixed a bug in certain books with images where they did not appear when “shrink to fit” was selected
- Changed the way text is selected to address sluggishness on devices with Retina displays
- Fixed a problem that manifested in ZIBBCNT and HBH where images in tables were not shown if “shrink images to fit” was selected.
- Made sure the built-in KJV, Help, and Welcome documents plus downloaded voices all get marked as “do not back up to iCloud”.
- Related to the above, downloaded books and voices were moved to a folder that should not be purged under low memory conditions.
Set the minimum iOS version supported to 5.0.

NEW! Export, Share and Publish your PocketBible Notes, Bookmarks and Highlights

Posted on: October 16th, 2012 by Michelle Stramel 24 Comments

Are you a prolific note-taker, highlighter or bookmarker in PocketBible? We have wonderful news for you! We have a new option on our website that lets you instantly pull your personal data (notes, highlights and bookmarks) out of PocketBible for the purpose of sharing, re-purposing or turning into your own PocketBible book (with BookBuilder). Whichever you want to do!

Possibilities abound

Over the years, PocketBible users have asked for the ability to export their valuable personal data out of the program. Yes, you can now do this but we’ve taken it a step further. You choose whether you want to export your notes, highlights or bookmarks. With any of those three options, we provide you with an html file that you can:

Use as-is
Bring into a text editor and reformat and publish in a format for sharing (i.e. PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.)
Publish as a PocketBible book using Laridian BookBuilder program (sold separately)

What kind of book could you publish for PocketBible?

A dictionary of your Bible bookmarks, where each dictionary entry is a bookmark category.
A commentary based on your verse notes.
A dictionary of your Bible highlights, where each dictionary entry is a highlight color.

To encourage your self-publishing efforts, we’ve lowered the prices of both versions of BookBuilder:

BookBuilder Standard – was $29.99, now only $19.99
BookBuilder Professional – was $99.99, now only $49.99

There’s never been a better time to consider publishing a PocketBible book!

Getting Started

The first step is to synchronize your PocketBible data with the Laridian Server. A synchronization option is available in every version of PocketBible (except Android OS – still to come!) The second step is to login to your account on the Laridian website and choose the new My Data link. You’ll find complete information on what you can do with your data and how to do it.

Let us know what you think

We hope you like this new flexibility in using your personal PocketBible data. Is this something you will use? Let us know how you will share your writings in the comments below.

New for PocketBible: IVP Dictionary of Paul and His Letters

Posted on: October 5th, 2012 by Michelle Stramel 2 Comments

The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters is part of the award-winning IVP Dictionary Series, presenting current evangelical thought on on Pauline theology, literature, background and scholarship.

The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters offers over 200 articles covering individual theological themes (such as law, resurrection and Son of God), broad theological topics (such as Christology, eschatology and the death of Christ), methods of interpretation (such as rhetorical criticism and social-scientific approaches), background topics (such as apocalypticism, Hellenism and Qumran) and various other subjects specifically related to the scholarly study of Pauline theology and literature. Separate articles are also devoted to each of the Pauline letters to hermeneutics and to preaching Paul today.

From Library Journal:

“A collection of 200 well-written, thorough, and informed articles on Pauline themes from Abraham to justification to wrath; epistles, as well as relevant critical and background issues such as Hellenism; social-scientific research; and the canonicity of the epistles. Among the members of the international team of 108 contributors are prominent contemporary evangelical scholars. Several of them have written extensively elsewhere on the topics they present here (James Dunn on Romans, F.F. Bruce on Paul in Acts, and Ben Witherington on Christology). The scholarship evident behind the articles is not presented at the expense of readability. Thus, this work is accessible to both scholarly and lay readers…” – Craig W. Beard, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib. (Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Now available for PocketBible and MyBible, the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters sells for $39.99.