The Sword Project
Encyclopedia
The SWORD Project is the CrossWire Bible Society's free Bible software project. Its purpose is to create cross-platform open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
tools—covered by the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
—that allow programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
s and Bible societies
Bible society
A Bible society is a non-profit organization devoted to translating, publishing, distributing the Bible at affordable costs and advocating its credibility and trustworthiness in contemporary cultural life...
to write new Bible software
Bible software
Biblical software or Bible software is a group of computer applications designed to view and study biblical texts and concepts. Biblical software programs are similar to e-book readers in that they include digitally-formatted books, may be used to display a wide variety of inspirational books and...
more quickly and easily.
Overview
The core of the Sword Project is a cross-platformCross-platform
In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
library written in C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, providing access, search functions and other utilities to a growing collection of over 200 texts in over 50 languages. Any software based on their API
Application programming interface
An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
can use this collection.
The project is one of the primary implementers of and contributors to the Open Scripture Information Standard
Open Scripture Information Standard
Open Scripture Information Standard is an XML application , that defines tags for marking up Bibles, theological commentaries, and other related literature....
(OSIS), a standardized XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
language for the encoding of scripture. The software is also capable of utilizing certain resources encoded in using the Text Encoding Initiative
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
(TEI) format and maintains deprecated support for Theological Markup Language
Theological Markup Language
The Theological Markup Language is a "royalty-free" XML-based format created in 1998 by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to create electronic theological texts. Other formats such as STEP and Logos Library System were found unacceptable by CCEL as they are proprietary, prompting the...
(ThML) and General Bible Format (GBF).
Available front-ends
Front-endsFront-end and back-end
Front end and back end are generalized terms that refer to the initial and the end stages of a process. The front end is responsible for collecting input in various forms from the user and processing it to conform to a specification the back end can use...
are available currently for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
(The SWORD Project for Windows), various Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
es (Xiphos and BibleTime), including all mainline Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
distributions and FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
(Eloquent), WinCE (SwordReader), Internet Tablet OS (Rapier), as CGI
Common Gateway Interface
The Common Gateway Interface is a standard method for web servers software to delegate the generation of web pages to executable files...
utility (diatheke) and others.
Beyond that there are a number of other front ends making use of the library.
A separate implementation in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
exists in JSword, with at least two cross-platform GUIs, the more mature BibleDesktop and the newer Alkitab, which has been described as "an improved Windows front-end for JSWORD".
Despite the similarity in name, the e-Sword
E-Sword
e-Sword is a Bible study computer software package created by Rick Meyers and developed for Microsoft Windows and Pocket PC. Development started in January 2000. Since that time, it has continually grown in popularity, reaching 15,000,000 downloads in January 2011. The user interface is available...
Bible software program is not a product of The SWORD Project, nor is it built upon The SWORD Project API.
Reviews
Bible Software Review, Review of MacSword version 1.2, June 13, 2005.Foster Tribe SwordBible Review http://www.fostertribe.org/reviews/swordbible.html November 25, 2008
Michael Hansen, Studying the Bible for Free, Stimulus, Volume 12 Number 3, August 2004, page 33 - 38
See also
- Bible softwareBible softwareBiblical software or Bible software is a group of computer applications designed to view and study biblical texts and concepts. Biblical software programs are similar to e-book readers in that they include digitally-formatted books, may be used to display a wide variety of inspirational books and...
- Go BibleGo BibleGo Bible is a free Bible viewer application for Java mobile phones . It was developed by Jolon Faichney in Surf City, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, with help from several other people who assisted in making versions for other languages and translations...
– a free Bible viewer for the Java ME platform - Palm Bible PlusPalm Bible PlusPalm Bible Plus is an open source document viewing program for Palm OS-based PDAs, focused on displaying the Bible and commentaries about the Bible. It allows the user to read Bibles stored in RAM or on a memory card via VFS...
– a free Bible viewer for PalmOS