Software | Nerdlets

A Guide to Using Zotero in Biblical Studies: Collecting, Annotating and Citing Bibliographic Data
Zotero is free bibliographic software that allows you to easily collect, annotate, and cite bibliographic data. It runs as a plugin for the excellent Firefox browser, which means that you have the web at your fingertips as kyou manage information, and also that it can run on any operating system that Firefox can run on [...]
Logos Rolls out Biblia.com, with Desktop Integration
David Stark at New Testament Interpretation reports on the (still beta) roll-out of Biblia.com, an excellent web resource for Biblical Studies. Check out the full report here, or if you’d just like to see the goods, check that out here.
Sale at WTS Books
WTS Books currently has a super sale on all NICOT commentaries. The sale is running until August 19th, so be sure to check it out!
ESV Study Bible Now Available on iOS Devices
The folks at Crossway have produced a really phenomenal application for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. The iPad version is especially handy, with an interface perfectly fit for its widescreen. The app is currently on a promotional sale ($9.99), so check it out on iTunes. Via: What’s Best Next
Upgrade In Progress!
No, Nerdlets is not dead. It’s just been on sabbatical. But now that I have graduated (so now it’s Dr. Nerdlet), I should have more time to regularly update this blog. Here’s what to expect in the future. Faster and better. Some plugins were slowing things down, and those have been removed or replaced. I [...]
Using Greek and Hebrew on your Web Site
The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here. Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out [...]

Download Internet Explorer 8 (Please!)

Mar 192009

: Image via Wikipedia

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think everyone should be using Firefox as their default web-browser. But I’m a realist, and sometimes you just need Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). And if you’re going to use Microsoft, then you should really definitely immediately download IE8, released today at noon.

There are a whole host of reasons to do this—security, speed, eye-candy, convenience, lots of new features—but the most important reason is to support Microsoft in their new not-evil policies. For the first time ever Internet Explorer will be standards-compliant by default. This is good news for browsers, programmers, and Microsoft; it will truly change the web be ensuring that every web page is viewable regardless of Operating System or Browser.

So if you’re running Windows, download today. You’ll be glad you did, and you will be doing something good for all of us!

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that viewing this site in IE7 results in a couple of formatting problems (with 3rd-party widgets and things), but IE8 displays everything perfectly. This is because IE8 is now standards-compliant! Thanks Microsoft!

eBook of the Greek New Testament (UBS4) for the Kindle, iPod, or iPhone

Bible and Hermeneutics, Biblical Greek, Books, Research Tools, Software 5 Responses »

Mar 142009

Update: The links to the ebook in question have been (preemptively) removed pending licensing discussions. See here. Perhaps I will have time in the future to provide a Tischendorf version, which is in the open domain.

Having Googled long and hard for a free, accented, open-source, Unicode eBook of the Greek New Testament, and to no avail, I decided to make one myself.

Getting the Book

You can download the NA26/UBS4 Greek New Testament eBook in the following formats (right-click and “Save File As”): Kindle, Palm, mobi, and xhtml. Follow the instructions for your device. The Kindle version is the best, so use that if your device supports it. You can convert eBook files using the free application Calibre.

iPhone and iPod Touch users can use the free application Stanza with this guide to get everything set up (it’s easy).

If you need another format for your reader, try Stanza’s Desktop Reader to convert one format to another.

I will post about new releases and improvements on this site, so if you like what you see you may want to subscribe. There are a couple of improvements I would like to make–like sub-chapters and a better Table of Contents–but that will have to wait for another time. Stay tuned!

Licensing

The source text is for this eBook came from the MorphGNT with UBS4 (ver. 5.08) by CCAT and James Tauber, as produced by the Work Viewer web-app created by the Open Scriptures project. It is the same Greek text you will find on the much more robust Resurgence Greek Project and was originally derived from NA26.

This eBook is distributed and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as allowed and required by the use of MorphGNT.

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Songbird 1.1 Released

Software No Responses »

Mar 112009

Tightening done If you’re looking for a good open-source media player alternative to iTunes or WMP, consider Songbird. Songbird 1.1 was released today and shows significant improvement over previous versions.

Unicode Guide for Mac Users

Biblical Greek, Christianity, Software No Responses »

Mar 062009

If you ever type in Greek, Hebrew, or any other language that requires special characters, then you need to make sure you are using a Unicode font. I have written up a pretty thorough guide to using Unicode fonts in Windows and/or Linux, but my Mac knowledge is flaky. If you’re a Mac user and are interested in typing in Greek or Hebrew then follow this guide.

Regardless of your operating system you might also be interested in my introduction to Unicode.

Next Version of MS Office Will Support OpenOffice Files

How to, Linux, Software No Responses »

Mar 052009

Some good news from Microsoft: Office 14 and the next Service Pack for Office 2007 will natively support the OpenDocument format (ODF) used by such software as OpenOffice.org and Google Docs. This open-source format has been adopted as a standard by recognized computing organizations and governments worldwide, succeededing to gain support in many areas that Microsoft’s OpenXML format has failed, which has put pressure on MS to respond with a similarly “open” format.

Cnet reports:

For a company that is happy to list a million reasons why Office is better than OpenOffice or Google Docs or other rivals, Microsoft sure is putting a tremendous amount of effort into working better with those products.
The next version of Office will natively support the OpenDocument format (as will the next service pack for Office 2007). As it is developing the next Office, Microsoft is also documenting every change it is making as part of its commitment to documenting all of Office’s various formats and protocols.

For those unable or unwilling to wait, you can download a plugin for MS Office that will add ODF support now. There is one from Sun (which I am given to understand is the version to be included in Office 2007 SP2 and later) or from the OpenOffice community.

Even More PDF Tools

Research Tools, Software, Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Mar 052009

As a follow-up to my previous post, here is an excellent review of some more great PDF conversion and manipulation tools.

Also I am happy to report that I have had good success converting PDF images to plain text with OCR terminal, so give it a try!

New Unicode Greek Font with Text-Critical Glyphs

Biblical Greek, Software 2 Responses »

Mar 032009

Rod Decker and Danny Zacharias have reported about a new unicode Greek font that will be of particular interest to those that need text-critical glyphs. From Zacharias’s blog:

I’ve just been made aware of an excellent Greek unicode font that is the most thorough I have ever come across. Designed for the papyrologist and text-critical scholar in mind. The font is called IFAO-Grec and can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. You will see also a documentation page, which lists all of the extra characters available.

You can download the font here.

Rod Decker mentioned in a comment that the font is offered free of licensing constraints:

The only statements I can find re. licensing issues is that “IFAO-Grec Unicode is issued free of all rights” and: “Elle est gratuite et libre de droits” (~ “It is free and free of copyright”). There does not appear to be any reference to any of the “Open” licenses.

This is not quite the protection I would recommend (see my post about Greek font recommendations) but if you need a full text-critical arsenal, this might be a good option.

For most of us, however, some other open-licensed Unicode font might be preferable. Check out my guide for more information and font recommendations for Greek (and Hebrew).

Add Your Bibleworks Database to Zotero

Biblical Greek, Computing, How to, Software No Responses »

Mar 032009

It’s pretty easy to add all the various modules and resources available in Bibleworks to your Zotero database. Follow this guide.

Search your PDFs with OCR

Computing, How to, Software, Webapps and Websites 1 Response »

Mar 032009

Paper isn’t going away, of course, but having all your documents on such an antiquated medium is often less than ideal. There is at least one major disadvantage to paper: searching is much more difficult. That’s just one of the reasons PDFs are so popular! Anybody can open a PDF file for free, search it for the information they need, and store it for later browsing without any significant impact on harddrive space.

Not all PDFs are Created Equal

But perhaps you don’t know that there are two kinds of PDFs. The best kind of PDF is the kind generated by computer software from a text file. These PDFs are searchable because the text is preserved.

But many PDFs are generated from images rather than text. If you create a PDF by scanning a document in a photocopier or image scanner then the result is usually an image-based PDF, rather than a text-based PDF. This means that your PDF will not be searchable because you computer does not have access to the underlying text, even though you can read it just fine.

Searching any PDF with OCR

So how can you overcome this difficulty? By using Optical Recognition (OCR) software. OCR tools look at the image and try to convert it to plain text, which can then be searched, copy-and-pasted, and indexed just like any other document (I worked with several such software systems during my undergraduate degree).

There are several good free OCR tools available for converting PDF documents to plain text. The best out there is that used by Google, which powers its Google Books services. The problem here is that you don’t have direct access to their software. You need to go fishing and wait for Google to bite. You can find instructions for doing that here.

If you want more control over your software, and you probably do, check out this list of handy PDF tools, many of which are OCR converters. There is also a lot of great software on this list.

Finally a new service, PDF-to-word, currently in invite-only Beta, accurately converts PDF images to MS Word documents. You might have to just bookmark this one since it’s not yet available to the public, but you might find an invite code online, such as here.

Conclusions

One remaining limitation of all this is that the OCR software listed above is optimized for English. Problems often occur with German and French, and don’t even bother trying it on Greek or Hebrew. Nevertheless the advantages for English scanned images are worth investing some time experimenting with one of these systems, especially if you have a lot of scanned PDF documents.

Göttingen Septuagint in Logos Pre-Pub

Biblical Greek, Books, Software No Responses »

Feb 272009

From the Logos blog:

The Göttingen Septuagint (a.k.a. Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum. Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis Editum) is the most important edition of the Greek translation of the Old Testament ever published. At present it spans 24 print volumes and nearly 7,000 pages, setting the bar high for text-critical studies.

For optimal use in Logos Bible Software, these 24 print volumes will be split into 65 digital resources. This means you’ll be able to view the Greek text right alongside of the apparatus, and in several cases multiple Greek translations with multiple apparatuses. By linking them all together, they will stay in sync as you scroll or jump from passage to passage.

Logos is making this resource available for $299.95 for a limited time. Get it here.

You can find a short but concise introduction to this edition of the LXX here. If you would like to learn more about the relevance of the Septuagint for Old and New Testament studies, Karen Jobes’s Invitation to the Septuagint is an excellent resource.