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

On 12/12/06, Justin Bailey <jgbailey / gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 ;)
>
> Justin
>
>