KJV 2.1.1 submitted to store

I just submitted a KJV update to the store. (DR, RV, and JPS should follow in the next couple days.) It includes an OS 3.0 fix, a text correction (2 Chronicles 7:17 -- thanks, Scott!) and:

- Restored autorotation
- Improved low-light mode

For those wondering when fun new functionality will arrive: I promise, some will arrive in subsequent updates! Thank you for your patience!

Update 9/11: Now in the store!

RSV now in store

I'm happy to announce that VerseWise Bible^® RSV has now been approved for sale and is available in the iPhone App Store.

I'm excited about its release because I think it is one of the few iPhone Bibles that include the deuterocanon, the books that were in the common Bible of Jesus' and the apostles' day (the Septuagint) but have since been removed from the Protestant canon. (Don't worry, it defaults to "off" if you only want the Protestant Bible!) And there are even a couple not in the Catholic canon.

There's the running joke about people who have an incredible preference for the King James Bible saying, "If it was good enough for John the Baptist, it's good enough for me!" (The joke being the KJV didn't come around until 1611.) Well, in the case of the Septuagint, the saying might be true!

Feel free to email me or leave comments about this release.

RSV-CE now available in store

RSV-CE (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition), aka "the Ignatius Bible", is now available in the iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch. Please tell all your friends and write plenty of good reviews for it. :)

Thank you for everyone's interest and support.

RSV almost ready

I have completed the text processing for the RSV deuterocanonical books. When that option is turned on, the Old Testament books are ordered according to the Septuagint, from which the deuterocanonical text comes. (Makes a certain amount of sense to do it that way, doesn't it?)

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers
• Deuteronomy
• Joshua
• Judges
• Ruth
• 1 Samuel
• 2 Samuel
• 1 Kings
• 2 Kings
• 1 Chronicles
• 2 Chronicles
• 1 Ezra
• 2 Ezra
• Nehemiah
• Esther
• Judith
• Tobit
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees
• 3 Maccabees
• Psalms
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Job
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Song of Solomon
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Sirach
• Hosea
• Joel
• Amos
• Obadiah
• Jonah
• Micah
• Nahum
• Habakkuk
• Zephaniah
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Malachi
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Baruch
• Lamentations
• Letter of Jeremiah
• Ezekiel
• Daniel

Along with some additional books, there is also additional text in a few books.

• Psalm 151
• Prayers, other narrative elements in Esther
• Susanna, Song of the Young Men, Bel & the Dragon in Daniel

Even if you're a Protestant, I think these texts should be of interest, their being in the Bible of Jesus' and the Apostles' time.

I only need to finish the logic for switching the deuterocanon on and off. That shouldn't take more than a day. After some testing, I hope to have it submitted to the store (to be approved after a week?) by the weekend.

Update 7/19

I have just submitted RSV to the store. Hopefully it will be approved as quickly as RSV-CE was.

RSV-CE submitted to app store

I submitted VerseWise Bible RSV-CE (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition) to the app store last night. My past experience has been for it to take about a week for a submission to be approved and appear in the store, but I hear on the grapevine it may be taking longer these days. We'll see! I'll post when it's been approved.

I am now working on the "regular" RSV release. As I've said before, this will include an option to display the deuterocanon, so I think it'll be of interest to Eastern Orthodox readers as well as Protestants. I have some code work and text processing to do, but I hope it won't take more than a week to get it submitted as well.

RSV update (& deuterocanonical text)

I now have most of the text parsed and ready for RSV and RSV-CE and have adapted VerseWise to be able to handle the RSV's deuterocanonical numbering. I will making deuterocanonical text an optional setting in the RSV release. (It will, of course, be standard in the RSV-CE release.)

This is my first exposure to how the RSV numbers deuterocanonical text. My basic understanding of it is that when Jerome translated/assembled the Vulgate he appended the deuterocanonical text onto the end of canonical books. Canonical Esther has 10 chapters, so the deuterocanonical text began at Esther 11. The problem with this is that the content of Esther 11 is actually supposed to be at the beginning of the book!

RSV maintains Jerome's numbering, but returns the text to where it belongs chronologically in the text. This is what the chapter list looks like in VerseWise:

And it's more fun than that -- the first verse of Esther is 11:2!

Needless to say, there were some logic changes that had to be made to VerseWise to be able to handle books that did not begin with chapter 1 and chapters that did not begin with verse 1.

I've seen other Bibles with deuterocanonical text handle the numbering in different ways. Some label chapter 11 as "chapter A", another labels chapters 11 & 12 as "chapter 1" but with verses "1a, 1b, 1c, ..." until you reach the standard chapter 1:1.

I think I have a slight preferences for the "chapter A" scheme. At least I imagine users would find it less confusing. (Though, not completely so -- you'd still have two "chapter3s" broken up by a "chapter C".) But it is what it is, and I'm just happy to have the full text available!

OS 3.0 bugs

Just noticed a bug in VerseWise when running under OS 3.0. When selecting a search result, the window does not automatically scroll to that verse.

I am working on an update for OS 3.0. If you've noticed any other problems with the current release of VW, please let me know!