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On Your Mark, Get Set, Author!!!
The highly anticipated second release of the Biblesoft Authoring system is now available. This powerful tool makes it easier than ever to create
and maintain your own reference works for inclusion in the PC Study Bible™ library!
Click here to download release 2 of the Biblesoft Authoring System™.
What is the Biblesoft Authoring System™?
For those of you who aren't yet familiar with the Biblesoft Authoring System™, let's do a brief "historical" review. With version 3 of PC Study
Bible™, Biblesoft brought down the walls of electronic publishing—enabling anyone
to create and add reference works to their Bible study library. This was not only a first in the Bible study software industry; it was a first in the entire software industry!
Biblesoft shipped release 1 of the Biblesoft Authoring System™ together with PC Study Bible™
version 3, to make the authoring of these reference works easier. Simply stated, the authoring system is a collection of macros (i.e., little tiny programs!) that can be used with Microsoft Word 97 or 2000. These are presented as a set of buttons, collected on a toolbar—as pictured below.
Since that initial release we have received a great deal of feedback regarding the
Biblesoft Authoring System™. Some people found problems that we had missed. Others had ideas to improve the ease of use, or to add
additional functionality. And it quickly became apparent that we would need to update the authoring system.
Something Old, Something New…
Which brings us to the Biblesoft Authoring System™, release 2. Here's a quick summary of what's new and different:
- All reported bugs and "anomalies" have been corrected.
- The Autotag button will automatically tag Bible references throughout your reference work (a bit of "programming magic" provided by your Biblesoft developers and a special feature in the
Biblesoft Authoring System™ Compiler!).
- The Image button enables you to select bitmap images for inclusion in your reference work.
- Formatting capabilities have been increased with the addition of the Paragraph style.
- Formatting capabilities have been simplified by allowing you to use Word's bold, italic, and underline features. These attributes are then
automatically "tagged" during the Compile process—becoming a permanent part of your reference work.
- Several of the "old" buttons have been renamed to conform to buttons that you should already be familiar with in PC Study Bible™. For
example, "Article" was renamed to "D/E", since any collection of articles you create will appear under the D/E menu in PC Study Bible™.
- Finally, a Biblesoft menu item has been added to the main menu under Word. One of the options on this menu allows you to hide or display the authoring system toolbars—so they won't be "in your way"
when you are editing other documents in Word. A second menu item enables you to uninstall the Biblesoft Authoring System™.
Looking to the Future…
We are currently hard at work on a series of interactive tutorials that will help you better understand how to get the most out of the Biblesoft Authoring System™
. We have chosen to release them separately so that those of you who have been waiting patiently for release 2 will not have to wait any longer.
We have also completed the initial work on a program that will enable you to create and edit map and photo sets for PC Study Bible™! In addition, a few
new features are under development, related to several exciting new add-on modules that will be announced in the near future. And we still have a few more ideas about how to make the
Biblesoft Authoring System™ easier and more powerful!
What about you? How are you using the Biblesoft Authoring System, or
how do you intend to use it? What are your favorite features? What would you like to see that isn't in there yet? Or what would you like to see improved
? Drop us a line and let us know what you think: davidt@biblesoft.com.
God bless you!
By His Grace,
David A. Tarbell
VP, Research & Development
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