Creating a new resource can be done through menu File / Resources / New.
Editing an existing resource goes through menu File / Resources / Edit.
When creating a new resource, several settings will have to be made about how this new resource operates. These are described below.
The user can enter the title of the resource. This title is used for easy reference to the resource.
A resource may live on the network, or it may be local. If it is local, it should have files that belong to this resource. These files make up the body of the text of the resources, that is, these files are the actual pages to be displayed. Files can be added to this resource by pressing the button to add files. You can add complete folders too. The whole folder will be added and everything that it contains.
There is a "Home" button visible when a resource is displayed. If this button is clicked, then the home page as given will be displayed. Sample home pages:
- http://www.bible.org.
- index.html. This shows the file "index.html" within the local files that belong to this resource.
Special text like "<book>" can be used as well so as to make a home page that depends on the book now opened. See heading "URL constructor" below for more information about that.
Book abbreviations are used when retrieving a resource.
Let's have a look at an example. We will retrieve the book of Matthew. The Resource will retrieve the information through a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Take note of the following URL:
http://net.bible.org/bible.php?book=Mat
If this URL is loaded, then the book of Matthew will display. As you can see, the book of Matthew is abbreviated using "Mat". If the Resource wishes to get to Matthew, instead of writing the full "Matthew", it uses only "Mat".
There is a button "Abbreviations" on the page. Pressing this button allows you to enter the abbreviations for all the books. The "Books" dialog shows, and you can enter the abbreviations.
An example will show how to enter an abbreviation. We are going to enter abbreviation "83" for book "1 John". To enter this, follow these steps:
1. Make 1 John blue by clicking on it or scrolling to it.
2. Press the right arrow key, or click at the right side of the blue line, as if you were clicking in the second column, the column called "Book in URL".
3. Type “83” (without the quotes).
4. Press Enter.
Press OK when through.
In order to save work, you can also import the abbreviations from another, existing, resource. See button "Import".
The second set of book abbreviations work similar to the first set, as described above. How to differentiate between these will be described below.
This button allows the user to go to the Resource Converter dialog where the required anchors can be written to the files. This is only needed when the anchors are not yet in the file.
In resources types where a URL must be retrieved, this URL constructor is used to assemble the URL to be retrieved. How it works is going to be explained using an example. Let's imagine that we're going to retrieve the Resource for Matthew 5 verse 8. The Resource would like to retrieve the following URL:
http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Mat&chapter=5&verse=8
You see that the book is "Mat", the chapter is "5", and the verse is "8".
The URL constructor for this will be:
http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=<book>&chapter=<chapter>&verse=<verse>
You see that part of the constructor is "<book>". First a left pointing angle bracket, then "book", and then a right pointing angle bracket. The Resource will consult the book abbreviations, and then find that for Matthew the abbreviations is "Mat", and then it will put "Mat" where it has "<book>". It does the same for <chapter> and <verse>.
The new URL will look like this:
http://net.bible.org/verse.php?book=Mat&chapter=5&verse=8
And this is exactly the URL that we'd like to retrieve in the Resource.
The second set of book abbreviations is consulted when the Resource finds "<book2>" in the URL constructor.
When you enter a URL constructor, it will be loaded immediately, so that you can see right away what the effect will be of any change that you make. You can also choose the book, chapter and verse that will be tested. There are controls for that too.
If the Resource is not on the network but local, you can just enter the local filename. For example:
<book><chapter>.htm#v<verse>.
This results in:
mat5.htm#v8
At the end of all, when all settings are fine, press button Apply to save the resource. It will now be ready for use, that is, this resource can be opened.
Some examples are given below to help you quickly on the way.
Manually preparing content is not difficult. At the start of each verse, just insert the appropriate anchor, for example:
<a name="mat_1_1"></a>
Then make the appropriate settings in the dialog for this resource to work. It's not difficult, only that it is a bit of work seeing there are so many verses.
To create the NET Bible as a local resource, download the HTML frames version from www.bible.org and unpack the files in some directory. Create a new resource. As the type choose "Based upon NetBible". Add all the files of the NET Bible that were unpacked above. Tick the books and the anchors as okay. Press OK to save this resource.
The Cambridge Paragraph Bible, written by F.H.A. Scrivener, including all the footnotes and cross references, can be found in the Libronix Digital Library System. In this example we are going to create Genesis from that book as a resource. To do that, do the following. In the Libronix Digital Library System, open the Cambridge Paragraph Bible written by Scrivener, and copy the book of Genesis to a word processor. This may have to be done in stages because when tried the last time, Libronix did not allow the whole book to be copied at once. Save it as a .htm page, for example gen.htm. Move that file to Linux. In Bibledit create a new resourse of type "Retrieve a different URL for each verse". Call this resource "Cambridge Paragraph Bible". Add the file "gen.htm" to the resource. For the home page, enter whatever you wish that would make a nice home page. This could be, for example, a title page, or a page made by yourself that has links to all the books. Let's enter here "home.htm", provided that this file is made available. As the URL constructor enter "<book>.htm#be_anc_<chapter>_<verse>" (without the quotes). Then enter some book names for the constructor. After pressing the Books button, enter "gen" for the book of Genesis (without the quotes). In the URL constructor above, this means that "<book>" is replaced by "gen", so that file "gen.htm" is loaded when we go to Genesis. After this is done anchors for each verse need to be inserted in the file gen.htm. Press button "Write anchors" to do that. In that dialog set the type to "Chapter starts at a pattern, verse 1 starts at chapter, verse starts at a pattern". Open the file gen.htm for conversion. As chapter prefix enter ">", as the chapter number choose "I, II, III", and as the suffix enter ". <" (all without the quotes). As the verse prefix enter ">" and as the suffix enter "<" (without the quotes again). The verse number can be left at "1, 2, 3". Then press the "Write" button. After done, press OK. Back in the Resource Editor, tick "Books are okay" and "Anchors are there", and press OK. The resource is now ready for use.
Projects from Bibledit can be made into a resource with little effort. Export a couple of books to OpenDocument. Then open these in OpenOffice, and save them as HTML Document. Then create a new resource, view at the anchors that Bibledit placed for you, make the appropriate settings, and ready it is.
The USFM can be imported into a Bibledit project. From the Bibledit project resources can be made, as described above.
There is a transcript of a conversation between two people how they managed to create a resource out of data exported from TW/folio. This transcript is given in full and might help you gain understanding in how to create the same or a similar resource.