- Bible 1.0.1 - A bible reference parsing and text retrieval

Ruby
1

All,

I’m proud to announce the release of Bible 1.0.1, a library for parsing
Bible references and retrieving the text from the web.

== What is it?

Mainly, an interactive application for retrieving and displaying books,
chapters, and verses. Once installed, type “bible” to start an
interactive
session. A wide variety of references are supported:

Gen 1 # first chapter of Genesis
Genesis 1 # Full names supported
1 Kgs 1 - 2 # 1st and 2nd chapter in 1 Kings
Luke 15:8-10 # Specific verses from chapters supported
Luke 15:1-7, 11-32 # Multiple, disjoint verse specification
Matt 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5: 31 # Multiple books together
Gen 1, 3 # discontinuous chapters
Gen 1 - 2:3 # Span chapters, to a specific verse

Besides the abbreviations listed above, most common names for books can
be
used ( i.e. “1 Kings”, “Matthew”, etc.). Other common means of
separating
chapters and verses may also be used (e.g. “Lk 15.11-32”, “Genesis 1;
3”,
etc.). My motivation for writing this library was to be able copy verse
references off web pages and paste them into the console with little or
no
change, so the parser is pretty flexible.

Three translations are supported out of the box: Revised Standard
Version
(the default), New American Bible, and Douay-Rheims. To access these,
enter
:rsv, :nab, or :dr at the console.

The script can also be passed various arguments to look up a reference,
print it, and exit. Run “bible --help” to see these options.

== How do I get it?

The easiest way to get it is via a gem download:

gem install bible

The project is hosted on rubyforge at:
http://rubyforge.org/projects/bible/

== Other Notes

If you run this on Windows, and have the win32console gem installed,
output
will be nicely paged. Book titles, chapters, and verses will also be
bolded.
Essentially, the text is a lot easier to read with the gem installed.
Any
one who wishes to get it working on *nix systems is welcome to contact
me
with a patch or even suggestions.

== Limitations

The library includes a definition of the books in the bible, the
chapters in
each book, and the number of verses in each chapter. This allows
references
to be parsed accurately but it makes supporting multiple Bible “schemas”
difficult. It will accept all deutero-canonical books ( i.e. Catholic
Bibles) but it the verse references for older translations, like the
Douay-Rheims, might be off. I’d like it to support all versions
eventually (
e.g. Vulgate, Septuagint, NIV, etc, etc) but that’s not the case right
now.

== Anything else?

The interactive application is the main point of this gem, but it does
include a library that could conceivably be used in other applications.
Also, all text is scraped off various web sites so do be nice - no need
to
download the entire Bible daily or anything.

Bug reports, feedback, and suggestions are welcome. God Bless :wink:

Justin

2

Wow this looks great! Thanks for building this.

Any plans to add local lookup (i.e., through one of the many Bible
data files formats like Pradis or STEP)? I would possibly be
interested in helping with that if I can carve out some time for it!

–Jeremy

3

On 12/12/06, Jeremy McAnally [email protected] wrote:

Wow this looks great! Thanks for building this.

Any plans to add local lookup (i.e., through one of the many Bible
data files formats like Pradis or STEP)? I would possibly be
interested in helping with that if I can carve out some time for it!

I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I don’t have any plans to
extend
it like that but I’d be glad to support the effort. The code is kind of
ugly
so it might be a good chance to refactor anyways :slight_smile:

4

Daniel S. wrote:

On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 07:36 +0900, Justin B. wrote:

I’m proud to announce the release of Bible 1.0.1 […]

It always did think the Bible needed an update :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Daniel
This is THE kindest usenet group I have EVER encountered. The things
Ruby enables us to accomplish will never cease to amaze me :slight_smile:

Ken

“I’m a militant agnostic - I don’t know and neither do you!” j/k

5

Yeah, things like QuickVerse, Logos, and Zondervan’s software use
them. I know one free software program (e-Sword) has managed to
figure out the STEP format, but I don’t know if any progress has been
made on Pradis. They’re very stingy with their formats (i.e., they’re
totally lame and proprietary), but it might be a fun project…

–Jeremy

6

On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 07:36 +0900, Justin B. wrote:

I’m proud to announce the release of Bible 1.0.1 […]

It always did think the Bible needed an update :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Daniel

7

On 12/12/06, Daniel S. [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 07:36 +0900, Justin B. wrote:

I’m proud to announce the release of Bible 1.0.1 […]

It always did think the Bible needed an update :slight_smile:

Haha, cute! I guess one point release in the last 1700 years isn’t so
bad
… :stuck_out_tongue:

Justin

8

Hi!

  • Daniel S., 12/13/2006 12:07 AM:

It always did think the Bible needed an update :slight_smile:

I recently was a bit Inet-abstinent.

The “Bible update” question is nothing to joke about because such an
update actually exists - The Holy Qur’an. At least this is what the
Qur’an says about itself. Unfortunately while the major message of
the Qur’an is interoperability (called “peace” in this context)
certain applications of it happen to strongly conflict with recent
security updates. There are also known issues implementing it on the
SoSaR(*) platform. One application used five years ago caused two
severe crashes that had negative effects to the world as a whole and
brought up issues that we all thought would never come up again. In
any case one should keep in mind that older versions have had
comparable issues (cursades, inquisition, …). I am therefore
faithful that these issues will not persist forever.

Peaceful Christmas, Hannukha, Eid al-Adha(+), Midwinter/summer or
whatever you celebrate these days.

(*) Separation of State and Religion
(+) This is the Feast of Sacrifice that commemorates the prophet
Ibrahim’s willingness to obey Allah by sacrificing his son Ismail -
jews and christians should be familiar with this incident besides
that the names are spelled a bit differently: “Ibrahim” is written
“Abraham” and “Ismail” is written “Ishmael”.

Jupp

9

Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt [email protected] writes:

Peaceful Christmas, Hannukha, Eid al-Adha(+), Midwinter/summer or
whatever you celebrate these days.

What about Gravmass? Celebrate Grav-Mass

10

What if Richard Stallman wrote greeting cards?

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others or their choice
not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you
a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated
recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not
without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose
contributions to society have helped make America great. This is not to
imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the
only America in the Western Hemisphere.

These wishes are sent without regard to the race, creed, color, age,
physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference or orientation of
the recipient. By accepting these greetings you are agreeing to the
following terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely
transferable with no alteration to the original greeting without the
express written permission of the issuer. It implies no promise by the
wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or
others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole
discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected
within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or
until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes
first. All warranties, either written or implied, are limited to
replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole
discretion of the wisher.

–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given
rabbits fire.

11
  • Christian N., 12/23/2006 04:01 PM:

What about Gravmass? Celebrate Grav-Mass

Sir Isaak Newton, Fellow of the Royal Society was born on the 25th of
december 1642 in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth in Lincolnshire, East
Midlands, England where at that time the Julian calendar was still in
effect. This means that the correct day to celebrate his birthday is
the 4th of january.

When using several frames of reference please make sure that the
appropriate transformation is applied. In this one the two frames of
reference differ by a time offset.

It is obvious that the term “birthday” has little to do with the
recurrence if a calendaric date but applies to an integral number of
years having passed by since the person was born. Otherwise somebody
born on the 29th of february 1980 would celebrate his 7th birthday on
the 29th of february 2008 - at a biological age of 28.

Note that Stallman seems to be aware of this problem because he calls
the holiday “Grav-mass”. To me it is an allusion to “Inter Gravissimas”:

http://www.bluewaterarts.com/calendar/NewInterGravissimas.htm

Jupp

12

Quoting Gregory B. [email protected]:

On 12/23/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:

What if Richard Stallman wrote greeting cards?

It’d actually be Eben Moglen that would help Stallman create such a
masterpiece :slight_smile:

I don’t know the original source of it … I’m guessing from the wording
it has
a conservative political origin rather than an open-source one. In any
event,
it reminds me of the question that was kicking around when Bill Gates
got
married – which has more lines of code, Internet Explorer or Bill
Gates’
pre-nuptial agreement? :slight_smile:

13

On 12/23/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:

What if Richard Stallman wrote greeting cards?

It’d actually be Eben Moglen that would help Stallmann create such a
masterpiece :slight_smile: