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From: mann@src.dec.com (Tim Mann)
Newsgroups: alt.cd-rom
Subject: Re: Bible on CD:  Any recommendations?
Date: 8 Jun 1994 21:28:55 GMT
Organization: DEC Systems Research Center
Lines: 49
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2t5d6n$cpd@src-news.pa.dec.com>
References: <8JUN199410065865@watson.bms.com>
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> A friend of mine wants to buy the Bible on CD-ROM.  Any recommendations?
> Reply by post or e-mail.

"Holy Bible '94" from Advantage Plus software is excellent.  It has both the
Online Bible and Seedmaster Bible.  I got this disk by calling Online Bible
USA and ordering from them, but later I realized the same disk is in local
computer stores.  I've seen it for $15.

The Online Bible on this disk is the latest version (6.11) and includes every
text module ever done for the O.B. up through the date the CD was pressed,
except for a few that require separate royalty payments to the publishers (NIV
and a couple of the non-English versions).  Even those are mostly available on
the CD in locked form, so if you buy the keys you can run them off the CD
instead of having to put them on your hard drive.  The unlocked material on
the CD includes many English translations, including KJV, RSV, NRSV, ASV,
Darby, Young, and several others; translations in French, German, Spanish,
Russian, Creole, Maori; Hebrew and Greek original texts, lexicons for Hebrew
and Greek; and many commentaries and sets of cross-references.

The Seedmaster doesn't include as much material, but their documentation says
it can use Online Bible texts too.  I haven't tried that.  Seedmaster has both
Windows and DOS interfaces, while O.B. has only a DOS interface, but I'm used
to O.B. already so I haven't experimented much with Seedmaster.  Seedmaster
also sells many more translations separately, including most of the modern
ones that are still under copyright.

All the software can either be run off the CD or installed to your hard drive,
or you can do a hybrid installation where some things are on the hard drive
and others remain on the CD.  I did the latter for O.B. so that I can add my
own notes and install additional text modules on the hard drive as they come
out.  (It took me a while to figure out how to do this; the documentation is a
bit scattered.  Email me if you would like help.)

***

Don't buy "Bibles and Religion" from Chestnut.  I have a copy, and have not
found anything I could use on it (that wasn't also on Holy Bible '94 in a more
recent version).

***

I've looked at "Straight from Heaven" in a store, but didn't buy a copy, so I
don't have much information.  The jacket says it includes Online Bible and
Seedmaster; however, I suspect it doesn't have such up-to-date and complete
versions as Holy Bible '94.  The jacket also says it has some other material,
like study lessons and clip art.  Maybe someone else has this disk and can
comment.

	--Tim