At the top of the Xiphos main window is the menubar. Almost all of the functions are available by activating the appropriate menu item. The functions have been grouped according to their type. For example, the file operations have been grouped into the menu.
The function of the Toolbar is to provide control over the Bible and Commentary Panes. Activation of the Toolbar option is done by moving the mouse cursor over the desired toolbar button and selecting it. A tooltip will appear if the mouse cursor is held stationary over a toolbar button, describing the function of the button.
The Toolbar consists of the following functions:
History View Toggle and drop-down menu
Bible Book Selector
Bible Chapter Selector
Bible Verse Selector
Bible Passage Summary
Selects the Biblical book to be displayed in the Bible Text Pane and Commentary Pane. Changes take immediate effect.
Selects the Biblical chapter of current book to be displayed in the Bible Text Pane and Commentary Pane. Changes take immediate effect.
Selects the Biblical verse of current chapter to be displayed in the Bible Text Pane and Commentary Pane. Changes take immediate effect.
On the left hand side of Xiphos there is the Sidebar. Here the user can switch between the different Sword modules, view bookmarks, do simple searches and view verse lists. To switch between all Sidebar functions, buttons have been placed at the top of the Sidebar.
- 3.4.1. Opening A Specific Bible Translation
- 3.4.2. Using the Parallel View Mode
- 3.4.3. Opening A Separate Bible Translation
- 3.4.4. Finding Out About The Current Translation
- 3.4.5. Module Options
- 3.4.6. View Options
- 3.4.7. User Annotation
- 3.4.8. Geography Support
- 3.4.9. Specific Word Meanings
- 3.4.10. Finding A Specific Word
Positioned to the right of the Shortcut bar is the Bible text pane. All your different translations will be displayed for full viewing. When starting Xiphos either your default Bible translation or the translation last used will be displayed.
In order to change the current Bible translation to another of your choice:
right-click in the Bible Text Pane. In the popup menu choose → and select your specific translation that you want to view.
under the option in the Sidebar, choose → and select your specific translation.
A nice function in Xiphos is the ability to view your specified bible text in five parallel translations of your choice. The Parallel View mode can be accessed by selecting just below the Bible Text Pane, next to the tab. Please note that you can only view one verse at a time. You can change the verse by selecting another verse, chapter, or book at the toolbar. Also note that modules that are Old Testament or New Testament only (eg Westminster Leningrad Codex and Byzantine Majority Text ) will not be able to display books, chapters, or verses that they don't have.
Additionally, a separate Parallel View window can be selected from the right click menu with . Your Bible pane will return to its normal single text view, and the new Parallel View window will show the complete chapter, in all 5 translations.
In order to view a Bible translation separate from the Xiphos interface:
Under the option in the Sidebar,choose → . Then right-click on a translation and choose the option.
To find out about the Bible translation currently being displayed:
right-click in the Bible Text pane. In the popup menu choose module name.
Under the option in the Sidebar,choose → . Then right-click on a translation and choose the option.
Most Bible translations have additional options which the user can select.
Words Of Christ In Red
Strong's Numbers
Morphological Tags
Footnotes
Scripture Cross-Reference
Headings
Image Content
Note
Translations in other languages such as Greek or Hebrew have specific options which deal only with the specific language.
In order to access these options:
right-click in the Bible Text pane. In the popup menu (example shown), choose and select the specific option.
There are several additional modes that can be selected from the menubar's pulldown.
The first 4 checkboxes control whether each named subwindow is displayed. The viewable state of the subwindows is remembered on a per-tab basis. This makes it possible, for example, to have a tab dedicated to a maps module alone (in a dictionary module, having alphabetically-listed places), by turning off the display of Bible, Previewer, and Commentary for that tab.
The remaining checkboxes control these other display features:
Verse Style - Toggles between Bible text display in separate verses, or in paragraphs instead. This is set on a per-module basis.
Link Tabs - When more than one tab is open, each one's verse is navigated separately in the disabled case. If tab linking is enabled, then all tabs navigate together, keeping all translations on the same verse.
Read Aloud - If you enable this, then Xiphos will funnel all selected verses through the festival text-to-speech system. Festival is a widely-available TTS, often installed by default in Linux distributions. Reading aloud is not currently supported on Windows.
Also, mouse-selected text may be read aloud from Bibles, commentaries, and general books, using the right-click menu, regardless of whether Read Aloud is selected.
Show Verse Numbers - Normally enabled, this toggle can be disabled to prevent display of verse numbers within the text.
Highlight Current Verse - Initially disabled, this toggle replaces mere alternate colorization of the current verse with a substitute high-contrast highlight. The colors used may be selected from the Preferences dialog.
Many users wish to make personal annotations on individual verses, without the need to put a full "personal commentary" module to use. Xiphos provides this in the right-click context menu in the Bible pane. This brings up a dialog showing the current verse reference and offering a text box into which to enter a brief personal note. Once the user closes the dialog with "Mark," the verse will be displayed in reverse-highlight (default, blue on yellow) and a marker will be inserted at the verse's beginning. This is metaphorically similar for users who mark verses in paper Bibles with a yellow highlighter and write personal notes in the margins.
Selecting an already-annotated verse will (in the usual case) bring up the existing content for re-editing. An already-annotated verse can be unmarked; the verse will cease to show in reverse-highlight.
If the user deletes the module name from the reference at the top of the dialog, then the annotation will apply to any Bible module at the selected verse. However, in this case, re-selecting the annotated verse will not initialize with the existing content, because the dialog is created based on the specific module reference.
A connection to browsing BibleMap.org is available by mouse-selecting a place name in any text. Use the right-click context menu to select → . A web browser will be brought up to show the selected name's geography via BibleMap, which provides Biblical detail overlaid on a Google Maps interface.
In order to check the meaning of a specific word, double-click on the word you wish to lookup. The word should then highlight itself and the explanation should be displayed, if available, in the Dictionary Pane.
The Previewer is where the user sees Strong's numbers, morphological tags, footnotes, and cross-references that the Bible Text Pane provides.
Footnote content is displayed in the Previewer when you hover over the indicator in the Bible text; it remains visible until your mouse moves over another indicator, Strong's number, etc. Sometimes you may want the text to remain anchored until you can move the mouse to the previewer to click on a link or to read large footnotes. To anchor the text so that you can scroll it in the Previewer, middle-click the indicator (or hold down the ) and move to the Previewer.
Cross-reference indicators work much the same way. Clicking the indicator will send the set of references to the in the Sidebar, where you can click them individually for reading in the Previewer.
Any verses shown in reverse-highlight have personal annotation associated with them, and such verses will include at the beginning of the verse. Hovering on this marker will show the annotation in the previewer, just as for publisher's footnotes.
If a devotional has been set via the Preferences dialog, then the day's devotional reference will also appear in the previewer, either on program startup or when the user requests it via the menu.
The Commentary pane is where the commentary modules are displayed. This provides easy reading, reference, and access to different commentaries currently installed. The passage viewed by the Commentary pane is directly controlled by the current passage viewed in the Bible Text pane, so in order to change to a different passage commentary, select the desired passage on the Toolbar.
If there are images that are part of a commentary, general book, or dictionary/lexicon, they may be clicked to invoke a viewer on that single image, in order to get a better view. This is particularly useful if image resizing has been enabled with the result that images are made very small in the subwindow.
Note
By changing to passage settings on the Toolbar, the contents in the Bible Text pane and the Commentary Pane will be changed.
To find out about the commentary currently being displayed:
right-click in the Commentary Pane. In the popup menu choose module name.
The Dictionary Pane's content is driven by its up/down selectors, typing in its navbar text, or double-clicks in the Bible, Commentary, or Book Panes.
Several keyboard shortcuts exist in Xiphos:
: opens this manual.
: opens the dialog.
: opens .
: opens the .
focuses and selects the main verse navbar text. You can then immediately type in new verse selection text. Be aware that, as is the case with most Sword applications, Xiphos understands many abbreviations: "G" is adequate to specify Genesis, for example, and any book name by itself implies 1:1.
opens the "Find" dialog. The subwindow to which it applies depends on which of them are visible: The Bible is first preference, then the commentary or general book, then the dictionary. So a tab can be dedicated to just a genbook, and Ctrl-F will perform "Find" within that pane.
brings the Commentary View forward when previously obscured by the Book View.
is the opposite of Alt-C, focusing on the general book.
opens a bookmark dialog on the current verse.
focuses on the dictionary navbar text.
detaches/re-attaches the parallel view dialog.
opens the personal commentary editor.
increases/decreases the base font size.
Location bar navigation:
: Verse previous/next.
: Chapter previous/next.
: Book previous/next.
The Xiphos interface has evolved over time, and there are two display libraries with which Xiphos can be built. The older, less featureful version is called "gtkhtml3", and the newer, more capable version is called "MozEmbed". Both of these display libraries render text in a browser-like fashion, using HTML constructs to control display.
Several desirable capabilities are unsupportable in gtkhtml3, and although recent Xiphos is written to take advantage of MozEmbed features, it is possible that the version running on your computer needed to be built with gtkhtml3 instead, either because the version of MozEmbed available for your system is not recent enough to support the needs of Xiphos, or it simply doesn't exist for your system. (Mozembed is not supported under Windows at this time.) The following differences will be apparent, depending on whether gtkhtml3 or MozEmbed is the underlying display engine:
Morphology and Strong's references, enabled via the right-click menu in some modules, are displayed inline with gtkhtml3; with MozEmbed, a blocked display is used, where these references are aligned beneath the word to which they refer, for a much more readable, less cluttered display.
Footnote and cross-reference markers (, ) are displayed as proper superscripts in MozEmbed, but not in gtkhtml3.
Links in gtkhtml3 are necessarily both colored and underlined; in MozEmbed, no underlines are needed.
Under MozEmbed, double-space display is available using the menu, but not under gtkhtml3.
It is not possible for gtkhtml3 to interpret multiple font face directives in a single window, so the gtkhtml3 detached parallel view window cannot provide per-module font selections. Also, modules' internal font requests are ignored in any gtkhtml3 window.
Using the "About Xiphos" selection under the menu, you will see the display library with which Xiphos was built.
