As an addendum to my guide to setting up Bibleworks 7 and 8 in Linux, I should mention this encouraging statement from the Bibleworks Website:
BibleWorks comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you purchase BibleWorks directly from us but cannot get it to work with your Windows emulator, you may return BibleWorks for a refund (shipping not included).
Bibleworks 8 now runs in Linux through WINE.
I posted a guide awhile back walking Linux users through the steps required to get Bibleworks 7 up-and-running in Linux (using Wine). It has recently been confirmed that the steps used in that guide also work for Bibleworks 8. If you are interested in running Bibleworks in Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE) you can find the guide here.
Surprisingly, it appears that some problems that plagued Bibleworks 7 in Linux are no longer issues in Bibleworks 8. This is good news!
The New York times recently covered the increasing popularity of Ubuntu’s flavor of GNU/Linux, attributing much of its success to Mark Shuttleworth’s leadership and wealth.
There’s a lot of sensationalism in the article. Like this:
But rather than preparing to code for the highest bidder, the developers were coordinating their largely volunteer effort to try to undermine Microsoft’s Windows operating system for PCs, which generated close to $17 billion in sales last year.
I don’t think Linux coders are all that subversive—we just want more control over our software. But still, it’s nice to see Linux getting some mainstream attention.
This is a post I wrote awhile back, but now includes a significant update (see below) that makes the whole thing worthy of re-purposing. Windows and Mac users should stop reading now lest their heads explode.
A Great Wireless Card
Switching to Linux from Windows is no longer as difficult as it used to be. I hope to post a full-fledged guide on switching to Linux in the near future, but in the mean time I would like to address one difficulty that has plagued would-be Linux users for some time: wireless cards and driver support. The persistent problem with Linux is that hardware manufacturers only program for Windows. The Linux community, with all its hacker ingenuity, has overcome this obstacle for most hardware, and big companies such as Intel and ATI have recently come-around and opened-up their drivers. Two problem areas remain, however: graphics cards and wireless cards.
The latter has given me a problem for some time, particularly with our old laptop. Built in cards usually work fine, but those PCMCIA and USB cards rarely include native Linux support. So, to cut to the chase, for all those Linux users out there, let me recommend the ASUS WL-107G. It redefines plug-and-play, which is not one of Linux’s strengths. Seriously, I removed my old card, stuck this in its slot, and with every expectation of needing to poke and proud, was sorely dissapointed to discover that the card in question “just worked.” OpenSUSE (and later Ubuntu) immediately recognized the card, installed the driver, accessed my WPA2-AES network, and was up-and-googling within 30 seconds. Amazing. If I hadn’t spend 2 months trying to get my Linksys card to behave, I would have said something like “Let’s see Windows do that!”
In short, the ASUS WL-107G is a PCMCIA notebook wireless card that runs in Linux, Windows, and Mac. It supports WEP, WPA, WPA2, with either TKIP or AES. In short, it will meet whatever security needs you have, in whatever Operating System you run, and for about $40 less than most other wireless cards with these specifications. If you are running a Linux box, and have had trouble with wireless, this is the card for you.
Important Update: Increase your Speed
For this and other cards based on the ralink 2×00 chipset (the WL-107G uses the rt2500 chipset), you may run into slow internet speeds when you first install. I did in Ubuntu. This is because the ralink drivers for some reason default to a 1 mbs data rate. To fix this, type the following into a terminal:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M
You should be operating at normal speeds. You can use http://speed.io to test your speeds before and after marking the change.
Awhile back I posted a four-part series on the advantages of Unicode for typing out Biblical Greek and Hebrew. I am linking these posts here so those interested have a one-stop shop for the whole series.
These posts provide a detailed but understandable explanation of what Unicode is, how to set up Greek and Hebrew Unicode keyboards, and what Fonts work best for each language. Enjoy.
One of the advantages of using Linux is the ability to tweak everything (everything!) to your individual needs. So if you are not satisfied with the layout of you Greek keyboard, you can change it, or download someone else’s changes.
Vern Poythress has a simplified Greek layout available here, for example, which places the breathing marks over the parentheses keys.
I also recently discovered a layout by Simos Xenitellis, which supports a much larger set of Greek characters all without changing your layout:
This post is about writing Greek Polytonic using a new combined Greek layout that supports Greek, Greek Polytonic/Attic (ᾂᾷᾰᾱᾢᾥ) and Archaic (ͼϾϡϠϲϹϟϞ…).
Follow these instructions to set it up. If you want to tweak your own keyboard layout (in Linux), there is a guide for that too.
If you’re just getting started and want to add Greek to your Linux desktop, follow this guide. For Windows, try this one.
The “How to Type in Greek” series of posts is designed to help you set-up your computer to type Ancient (Polytonic) Greek using a Unicode Font. Be sure to check out Part I (on Unicode), II (on setting up Windows), and III (on recommended Fonts).
Introduction
This post is designed to show Linux users how to set-up a Polytonic Greek keyboard, with particular attention to Ubuntu. The goal is that our keyboard will function identically regardless of Desktop Environment or application—QT and GTK should each work flawlessly, and both KOffice and OpenOffice.org (as well as any other native Linux applications) should generate identical Greek characters. Once your keyboard is setup you will be able to dynamically switch between Greek and English in any application.
Before getting started you may want to read two previous posts in this series. (1) This post explains the advantages of Unicode and its usefulness (and necessity) for typing in Greek. (2) Once you have your keyboard setup, you will need to read through this post to find an open-source Greek font that implements all the necessary bells and whistles for typing in Ancient Greek (all the fonts listed are compatible with Linux).
A Guide by Vern Poythress
The most important resource for Polytonic Greek in Linux is this guide by Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary. This is an excellent guide, complete with links and special files that will help you get the perfect setup. The only difficulty is that it is not distribution specific. In general this is a good thing, but I ran into problems with Ubuntu due to their default input method under 8.04, and the setup is much easier in 8.10. If you have problems with the steps below, follow Poythress’s guide.
Ubuntu 8.10
Polytonic Greek works out of the box in Ubuntu 8.10, much to my surprise (see the comments to this post; thanks Simos). To get it working, right click on your panel and add the keyboard indicator. Next, right click on your new keyboard indicator and choose “Keyboard preferences.” 
This will bring up a dialog. Choose the layouts tab, then the Plus button. You choose your layout by Country then by Variant. You want “Greece” and the “Polytonic.”
That’s it. Everything should be working, though you may want to follow Poythress’s guide to tweak your keyboard layout a bit. If your would prefer to use SCIM, which is a different Input Method particularly useful for complex characters (and which might solve problems with compatibility issues), follow the guide below on Ubuntu 8.04.
Ubuntu 8.04: How to Set Up SCIM
Ubuntu, and several other GNOME-heavy distributions (like Fedora), do not use SCIM by default, which is the preferred input method for complex characters (accents and the like). You will therefore have to set it up manually, which is not difficult. Here are the steps I used for Ubuntu:
The latest versions of Ubuntu provide a pretty simple way of doing this. You just need to set a couple of language options. 
You need to allow for complex character creation. System –> Administration –> Language Support. Check the box for “Enable support to Enter Complex Characters.” This tells X.org that you want to use SCIM, rather than the default input method. You do NOT need to install anything else, so ignore any notices that tells you otherwise, and don’t select any languages. You are only concerned about characters and keyboards. Now you will need to restart.
When GNOME boots up again, there will be a little keyboard icon in your taskbar. Right-click on this icon and select SCIM Setup. Go to “Global Setup.” You should see a list of various Input Methods. You need “Other – English/European” . Check that box, Apply, then close out of the dialog. You may need to restart again, but it shouldn’t be necessary. 
You will now be able to use the keyboard icon to select the preferred Input Method. I have English/European set as default, but you can always move between different methods if you like. Just click on the Keyboard icon, and select what you want to use. Whenever you type in Greek you will need to be using “English/European” in order to get all the accents.
Moving to SCIM as the defult input manager may result in a couple of problems
(1) You may loose some shortcut features in Nautilus as a result of certain SCIM implementations. Nautilus allows you to type to select folders and files, and with SCIM this might no longer work. There is an easy fix, however. At the command line, type: im-switch -c . Select scim-immodule. Restart your x-server and you should be good to go.
(2) Regardless of distribution, you will need to install extra software if you use Virtualization technology, such as VirtualBox or VMWare.
For Ubuntu (or other Debian-based distributions) search for and install scim-bridge-client-qt and scim-bridge-client-qt4 in Synaptic, or just type the following in a Terminal:
sudo apt-get install scim-bridge-client-qt scim-bridge-client-qt4
All Distrubutions: Setting up your Keyboard
Now that you have SCIM set up and everything else working, you can install your Greek keyboard. Right click on the gnome panel and select “Add to Panel.” Select “Keyboard Indicator” and close out of the dialog. 
Right click on your new panel item (which probably says something like “USA”) and select the “Preferences” option. Click the “Layout” tab, then add a new layout. You need to add the “Greece” keyboard and the “Polytonic” variant. You can now switch to the Greek Keyboard layout by clicking on this panel dialog, or you can set a keyboard shortcut for alternating between keyboard layouts (I have keyboard-switching set to the Caps Lock key).
These steps provide you with all the necessary fundamentals for enabling Polytonic Greek in Ubuntu (or other distributions). But this is Linux, so the customization options are endless. You can, for example, remap certain keys so that they are more intuitive (such as the breathing marks). For this, and other hand tricks, follow Poythress’s guide, start with the section on “Adding Keymaps.” You can skip the section about the “Compose” file, which is unnecesary once you have SCIM working.
Enjoy all the polytonic goodness!
I have had past experience with Mounce’s Flashworks software, a free Windows and Mac program designed to help you learn Greek, but it has gotten a serious upgrade since the last time I checked. Here’s the description on Mounce’s Website:
FlashWorks is a vocabulary drilling program. Each word is tagged for difficulty, type (noun, verb, etc.), chapter, and frequency in the Biblical text. You can then ask for any cross section you wish, such as “all verbs occurring more than 30 times in the New Testament that occur in chapters 16 through 24 in the text and which I have tagged with a difficulty rating of three through five” (five being the most difficult for you). FlashWorks remembers words as you get them right and/or wrong and can automatically set the difficulty rating.
The download is a paltry 6mb, which is a good thing. Databases for the language (i.e., the actual vocab) are downloaded separately (though Greek is included). This, again, is a good thing; it allows the program to be modular, which means the same basic program can be used to learn any language. Databases are currently available for Greek, Hebrew, French, German, and Spanish. And you can always create your own.
You will need to download and install special fonts for Greek and Hebrew (links are available on the site), although it appears that Greek is included in the install. The software uses TekniaGreek and TekniaHebrew, which points up one big disadvantage to FlashWorks and the Teknia fonts: they are not Unicode fonts. If you don’t know what this means, or don’t know why unicode is important, check out my previous introduction to Unicode. The lack of unicode support is why I did not include the Teknia fonts in my list of Great Greek Fonts.
Installers are available for Windows and Mac, and it works beautifully in Wine on Linux (on Ubuntu). And did I mention it is free?
I do have a few qualms. The interface is terribly ugly, and the whole thing could use a usability overhall. Making your own word lists could be easier. I would love to be able to select/tag words in order to create a chapter-specific Machen vocab list, for example, but as it is that would be too time consuming. But it gets the job done, and that’s the important thing with Greek: memorize the vocab, then you can move on to more important matters!
My Windows readers will be perplexed by this post, so as a brief preface, let me just say feel more than free to skip this one (and any other “Linux how to” posts that might pop-up in the future). I spend most of my computer time in Linux, but there are a couple of Windows applications that I use regularly. Bibleworks is one of them. This post explains how I got Bibleworks to run in Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10) using Wine. This guide is confirmed to work with Bibleworks 7 and Bibleworks 8 using any Wine version 1.0 and up (Bibleworks 6 has worked fine for years).
Here are the steps I used to run Bibleworks in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 (though the instructions should also work in any Linux distro, like Fedora or OpenSUSE, that includes Wine 1.0 and later).
Step 1: Install Wine
You will need to most recent version (1.0 or higher). Use your distribution’s package-manager or follow the instructions for your distribution here (for Ubuntu, use this guide.
Step 2: Tell Wine to Play Nice
There are a few modifications that you will want to make to ensure that Wine plays well with Bibleworks. First, and most important, make certain that you are emulating XP. To do this, type “winecfg” in the command line, and make sure XP is the selected version.
Second, the default settings for Internet Explorer will not work with Bibleworks. We will need to change it. Do the following in a terminal to backup the default setup:
mv ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Internet\ Explorer ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/IE6BACKUP
Now we need to use the winetricks script to set up a fake Internet Explorer. In the command line:
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
chmod +x winetricks
./winetricks
This will bring up the following window. There are a lot of great options here. The only one that you need to worry about at the moment is fakeie6. Select it and let winetricks do its work.
Step 3: Install Bibleworks 7
Now the fun part. Pop in your first Bibleworks disc. Open you favorite file manager and explore the CD. The application you want is “autorun.exe,” and it is best not to run it from the command line (since you will have to switch discs several times). Select the modules you want and start installing.
The only difficulty I ran into here is being a little trigger happy on the disc switching. When the window for exchanging disc opens, go ahead an put in the requested disc. Do not click OK until the disc is fully loaded. Once the disc icon shows up on your desktop (or “Computer” folder), it’s ready to go, and only then should you click OK. Jumping the gun here could result in Bibleworks never recognizing the disc, and you will have to start over. (If this does not work, you can copy the contents of each disc into a folder in your home directory, then use the command line and run wine /path/to/folder/setup.exe).
Once it’s installed, you will have a Bibleworks icon on your desktop. Drag and drop this to whatever launcher or menu you want, or just doubleclick to launch Bibleworks.
Step 4: Updates.
Shutdown Bibleworks and then start it up again. This saves your settings, which is necessary if you have a crash. You should do this anytime you make changes to Bibleworks, such as setting options or default versions.
Before tailoring Bibleworks to your personal needs, it’s a good idea to download all the updates. Sometimes an update can reset your settings, so update before your tweek.
You should be able to check for automatic online updates (this is why we ran the winetricks script). Do not use the dialog for this in the Options menu. Instead, go to Help – Bibleworks on the Internet – Check for updates. This should bring up the window to the left. Check all that you want (I recommend everything), and then click “Apply.”
It should work, and will eventually restart Bibleworks on its own.
Step 5: Getting Pretty
Check out this screenshot. Not pretty, right? That’s because the standard fonts are not really good in Wine. Go to Tools – Options. Select the Font Tab. Adjust as necessary. I used the default font for my Ubuntu theme, which looks very nice. You may also want to change your Greek and Hebrew fonts. For recommendations, check out this post.
Also, while you are in this dialog, set up the “Export” fonts for Unicode support. Use the screenshot to the left as a guide.
You can “pretty up” the rest of the interface by using the aforementioned winetricks script to install the “Core Fonts” package and “Tahoma.”
Step 6: Fixing Smaller Bugs
One minor annoyance occurs when Bibleworks starts and the Welcome Screen appears. In the bottom right hand corner of this dialog box you can uncheck the “Appear at Startup” button, but it won’t do any good. To keep this screen from appearing you need to manually change a line in the bw700.ini file. Located this file in your Wine/BibleWorks 7/ directory and change the following line:
ishowgetstart=1
Change the value to 0.
Step 7: Enduring Problems
There are several issues, but only one of them is major. The most obvious is the lack of any icons on the toolbar. This is really not a problem, however, since Bibleworks gives you many ways to get to the dialogs you need.
Update: Some of what follows is not an issue in Bibleworks 8, but help files do still crash Bibleworks.
The biggest issue is that modules that require Windows Help files (.chm) will crash Bibleworks when you close them. This includes many of the various “books” that Bibleworks provides, such a Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar. There is a work around, however: don’t close the window after you open it. As long as you do not close the window, you can browse, read, copy/paste to your heart’s content. Bibleworks lets you have as many of these windows open as you want, so when you are done with them, just minimize them.
Work Around: You can always view the resource in a native Linux CHM viewer, such as gnochm. I have linked all the .chm files in the Bibleworks “databases” directory into a separate folder to make accessing these resources easier.
Finally, if you do have a crash, you will see the screen to your right. Make sure you select the last option. Bibleworks is a little over-protective. Do not allow it to delete your .ini file, as you will have to reset all your settings. Instead, select “Let the operating system handle the error” and just restart.
I very much recommend backing up your settings file, particularly if you make heavy modifications to the default options (such as specialized search versions, font choices, etc). Despite Bibleworks’s claim to the contrary, the bw700.ini file in the Bibleworks directory is not the file to backup. Bibleworks creates an .ini file in the Windows directory, and that is the one you need (this has been fixed in a recent update). To backup, simply browse to that directory and copy the bw700.ini file, or use the terminal:
cp ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/bw700.ini ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/bw700.ini_BAK
Do the same for the file in the Bibleworks directory, since the most recent version does use that file:
cp ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Bibleworks\ 7/bw700.ini ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Bibleworks\ 7/bw700.ini_BAK
Should you have any problems in the future, just restore your backup file. Windows users will benefit from this as well (I get the occasional crash there too).
I have not had too many crashes. It is pretty stable, for a Wine app, and you can always use something like VirtualBox if you need more stability. Also, whenever you spend a good amount of time changing your settings (such as default search versions, etc.), shutdown and restart to save your settings.
Conclusion
I hope this helps Linux users use this wonderful software. Please post problems (and solutions) in the comments. Here is one last screenshot, with everything running:
This is the third past in a series of posts about typing in Greek. The first post was about the the joys (and necessity) of Unicode character encoding. The second detailed how to set up a Greek keyboard. Now you need a good font. While up to this point we have been dealing with encodings and characters, the way in which an operating system matches the push of a key to a letter in a given language; now we are going to focus our attention on glyphs, the way in which different characters are represented by a particular font.
What do you want in a Greek Font?
Eye Candy: The most immediate qualification for a good font is eye candy. Seriously: this is important. The better looking your font, the easier it is to read, both for you and your audience.
Check out the image to the left. Which do you like better? The top glyph is what we call “sans serif” because it does not have the fancy shaping and decorative formatting that the bottom glyph has. Sans serif fonts are particularly common on the internet because they are the easiest to read, even if not the prettiest over all. Times New Roman, by contrast, is a serif font. If you write your papers using a serif font, your Greek should be a serif font as well (and vice-versa). This is usually just a matter of personal preference, but generally readers prefer serif over sans serif for extended amounts of text, and the opposite for presentations (PowerPoint) and Web pages.
A more specifically Greek decision involves accents, the most important of which is the circumflex. This again is a matter of preference, but I prefer the full semicircle over the tilde. Having said that, the font I am eventually going to recommend uses the tilde. Oh well…
Free: The second (and most important) qualification of a Greek font is that it should be free. There are two types of free: free beer and free speech. The former is probably the most immediate concern, but the latter is really the most important. A “free beer” font will be free to use and will not encumber you with licensing fees should you decide to publish your work using that font. The Microsoft fonts seem like they are free-beer fonts—at least you probably do not remembering paying for them—but in reality they are encumbered by a pretty strict license. They will be fine for basic personal use, but if you are planning to start a Greek-Verse-Greeting-Card business, or am online journal for NT studies, you might want to pick something else. At the very least, you want to use a font that is free for both non-commercial and commercial use.
You may also be interested in a “free speech” font. In addition to being free as in free beer, free speech fonts allow you to redistribute, modify, and have absolute control over all underlying mechanics. You can use them, change them, and distribute them, all without asking permission.
In short, you want a font that is licensed under an a so called “copy left” license. These are “open source” licenses. Applied to fonts, these licenses define the parameters by which you can use and modify the glyphs in question; they will be royalty-free (“free beer”) and also free-to-modify (“free speech”) under certain conditions. .
So what fonts should I use?
The following is a list of the best fonts available. Only Unicode fonts are included:
It includes installers for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as source code. The recent addition of GentiumAlt to the font family eliminates all my previous hesitations about recommending this font. It really is excellent, and its Latin characters are so nice that I have begun using it as my default serif font for all my documents. Gentium is maintained by SIL, which has developed quite a reputation among linguists, and promises robust future development while maintaining an open licensing schema. (By the way, if you are using Ubuntu/Debian Linux, you can install from the command line: “sudo apt-get install ttf-gentium”.)What about Hebrew?
I have given short-shrift to Hebrew, and I apologize. There are reasons, however. There really is only one decent open-standard font that I know about for Biblical Hebrew: Ezra SIL. It’s fully open under SIL’s OFL, it supports every character used in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, and it’s easy on the eyes. You will need to download a special keyboard to get it working, though. Instructions for doing so are available on the download page, where you can also find a keyboard map of the layout. Also: you may run into small problems with Macs and in Linux, though nothing catastrophic. If anyone has other Hebrew fonts they would like to recommend, please do so in the comments.
Ros Clarke notes in one of the comments that SBL has a good Hebrew font available here. It is a very well designed font that includes Linux support. The only disadvantage is that it is not licensed under an open standard, though SBL does provide it free of charge for non-commericial use. Thanks Ros.
Conclusion
Don’t forget to check out my previous posts on Unicode and on setting up a Greek keyboard. All this might sound a bit intimidating, but it really will make your life easier in the long run.
