1 .\" @(#)$Header: /home/matthew/cvs/bible-kjv-4.10/bible.1,v 2.2 2005/01/22 19:15:02 matthew Exp $
3 .\" This file is provided for unrestricted use provided that this
4 .\" legend is included on all tape media and as a part of the
5 .\" software program in whole or part. Users may copy, modify or
6 .\" distribute this file at will.
7 .\" -- Chip Chapin, September 4, 1989
9 .TH BIBLE 1 "January 8, 1993"
11 bible \- Lookup words and verses in the Bible (King James version)
23 .RI [ verse-reference(s) ]
26 writes the text of specified Bible verses to stdout.
27 The text used is the Authorized (King James) version.
29 may be given either on the command line, or interactively.
31 also supports instant searches for verses containing a particular
32 word, or combination of words.
34 uses a specially-compressed form of the text that allows for rapid
35 random access, while still compressing the original 4.4 Mbyte text into
37 (plus the "concordance" data file, which requires nearly 900 Kbytes).
42 .TP 15 "\w'\-t\ prefix\ \ 'u"
44 Toggles special output formatting (pretty-printing).
45 By default, pretty-printing is
47 (a change from earlier versions).
48 When pretty-printing is
51 precedes each verse with its book/chapter/verse
52 reference. When pretty-printing is
54 the book name and chapter are printed on a line by themselves,
55 and only when the chapter or book changes.
56 The start of each verse is indented and preceded by the verse number.
57 The book and chapter names are separated from the text
58 by blank lines to facilitate post-processing by other tools such as
60 Pretty-printing activates automatic line breaks (
64 When pretty-printing is
67 prints one verse per line, even though the text may be much longer than
68 will fit on a single line of a display.
69 This is very handy when the output will be processed by other
70 programs, but it doesn't look very nice.
73 option sets a limit on the length of an output line, causing
75 to break lines (only between words) to fit. The
77 argument is optional; if it is not specified,
79 will use the value of the COLUMNS environment variable
81 If COLUMNS is not set a default value of 79 is used.
85 normally allocates up to 1 megabyte for buffers to store uncompressed
97 normally searches for the text data file first in the current directory,
102 option may be used to change the search path.
104 should be a list of directories, each separated by a space (be sure
105 to escape them from the shell).
109 normally expects to find the text data in a file named
111 and the concordance data in
112 .BR bible.data.conc .
117 will look for a text data file named
119 and a concordance data file named
125 accepts verse references in a variety of forms,
126 including single verses and verse ranges.
129 Jn3:16, john3:16,17 ps1:1-6
131 Most recognizable abbreviations are allowed, and spelling errors are
132 ignored if the book can be made out in the first few characters.
133 No distinction is made between upper and lower case.
134 Multiple references may be provided on an input line, delimited by spaces
137 Verse and chapter will be silently coerced into a realistic range, e.g.
138 "Ps1:87" will be treated as Psalm 1:6 since there are only six verses in
140 "Rev99:99" will be treated as Revelation 22:21 (the last verse in the
142 A book name by itself is assumed to be a reference to chapter 1, verse 1 of that
143 book, i.e. "Acts" is the same as "Acts1:1".
144 Similarly, a book and chapter without a verse is assumed to refer to verse
147 A range of verses may be printed by giving a starting and ending reference,
148 separated by a hyphen ("-").
149 For example, "Gen1:1-Rev22:21" will dump the entire text (about 4.4 MB).
152 keeps track of your current context and will attempt to interpret references
154 For example if you request "John1:1", followed by "3:16", and then "17",
155 the second reference is assumed to be within the book of John, and the third
156 is assumed to be within chapter 3 of that book.
157 An empty reference, e.g. a blank line on the input, will show the
158 next verse following the last one displayed.
160 More examples of legal verse references:
174 .SS Concordance (Word Searches)
176 includes a concordance, with which you can immediately find all
177 the verses in which a word appears.
180 command will select all the references that include
183 will display the number of matching references, if any, but since the
184 number could be quite large, it won't actually list the references
187 In order to list the references from a word search, the
191 command is used. Likewise, to print the full text of the verses
192 selected by a word search, use the
198 The lists for multiple words may
199 be combined using the
205 commands. First create a reference list using the
207 command. For example,
211 will find 231 references to the word "faith". To narrow the list further,
216 will inform you that, while there were 281 references to "love", only
217 16 of them were also in the previous reference list (i.e. contained
219 The "combined list" of 16 references produced by the
222 command is the intersection of the two lists, and replaces the
223 original reference list.
229 commands will now apply to the combined list. You can continue to apply
232 command to the combined list. For example,
236 will further narrow the combined list to only two references. Typing
238 then displays the full text:
242 3 Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of
243 love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the
244 sight of God and our Father;
248 8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the
249 breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
254 command is similar to
256 but it produces a combined reference list that is the union of the two
257 lists. In other words, the list includes those verses in which either of
258 the words appears. For example
263 will find all 283 verses in wich either word is used.
265 By default, reference lists cover the entire Bible.
266 But for those times when it is useful to limit them to a particular
276 will limit future reference lists to the New Testament. If you have a
277 current reference list, references that fall outside the limits will
278 be dropped. Note that only a contiguous range of verses may be used.
279 To reset the limits so that the whole text is searched, the command is
283 For interactive use, invoke
285 without any verse references on the command line. You should see a prompt
292 will print a command summary.
294 The program accepts three types of interactive command input:
298 Bible verse references, as described above.
302 Concordance (word search) commands, also described above.
314 Miscellaneous program control commands:
316 .TP 15 "\w'\-t\ prefix\ \ 'u"
321 Toggles output formatting modes.
324 Begin writing program output to a file. If file exists, output is
325 appended to what's there already.
328 Stop writing to a file.
333 (forward or backward) in which
335 will move through the text when a blank line is entered.
337 .B \q, ?bye, ?exit, ?quit, ?q
342 References to the one-chapter books of Philemon and 3 John
343 are non-standard in that they require a dummy chapter number. For
344 example, use Phm1:5 instead of Phm5 to get verse 5.
348 is handled strangely by the Concordance. The apostrophe has been
351 has been treated as if it were a separate word.
352 So, for example, if you wanted to find all references to
353 "refiner's" you would have to first search for "refiner"
356 and then combine it with a search for "s"
360 The convention for handling partial verse specifications can be
361 clumsy. A book name by itself, e.g. "Matthew" is taken as a reference to
362 verse 1:1 of that book. So
365 results in a range limit of a single verse (Mt1:1) instead of the
366 whole book as one might hope. Similarly,
369 results in a range of Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 1:1, instead of extending
370 all the way to Revelation 22:21.
374 /usr/lib/bible.data.conc
378 Chip Chapin, Hewlett Packard Company (chip@cup.hp.com).
380 The current version uses Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression on the data file,
381 though I modified the "compress" program to emit checkpoints at known intervals
382 to facilitate random access to the data.
383 I call this simple technique "windowed compression", and it could be used for
384 any similar application.
385 The data file can still be uncompressed using the standard "compress"
386 utility if my file header is removed.
388 I would like to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the authors of the
390 program, which I modified for use in the text storage component of
403 Matthew Vernon <matthew@debian.org> has substantially updated a the
404 code of this package. His alterations are made available under the
405 terms of the GNU General Public Licence, version 2 or later, as
406 published by the Free Software Foundation.