Just wondering why there haven't been any new versions released since 2015?

Has Kostas ended the project?

theWord 6 is in the process of release, it is just that things in life get in the way.
Some users have been following and testing the beta version. For any enhancements you can see the changelog in the beta files.
Beta link etc is in my signature.

Oh thanks for the answer! And that's great news! I had a look at the Beta version and it looks good. I can't actually see any difference, but I'm sure it's packed full of improvements "under the hood". (I don't suppose you could list any of the major new features?)

I totally understand about life and things getting in the way… I was planning to publish an important book 5 years ago, but I've been ill over the last few years, so the release of my book has dragged on and on, and since then it's been expanded into a series of 5 books! I keep hoping to publish them soon (I will also release free modules for TheWord )

So I understand how these things can get delayed!

JG, I would like to make a feature request. I've been using TheWord for nearly 10 years now and love it. (I had previously used eSword, but thank God I met someone who recommended TheWord to me! It is so much better!)

After all these years, the program still does everything I need it to and I don't have any real problems with it. There is only one feature request that I would really, really appreciate you implementing, if it is at all possible, or anything like it…

My problem is that I have a very large number of Bibles - so many that they take up the top third of the Bible View window! (But I do need access to them all.) It would be so helpful if the Bible View had something similar to what the Book View has. I mean being able to click in the top left corner and select either "All modules", or narrow it down to show just one specific category.

I know that Bible modules don't have built-in categories, but I'd like to be able to assign my own custom tags to my installed Bible modules. For example, categories like "English", "Greek", "Literal", "Dynamic", "20th Century", "Favorites", "Tyndale Bibles" etc. Perhaps the same might also be possible for book modules too (eg. "Textual studies", "Apologetics" etc) Though this is far less important to me than getting my Bible modules organized.

Another (far less important) feature suggestion would be the ability to compare Bible modules by simply Shift-clicking multiple Bible modules. So, say you're viewing KJV, you hold down shift and click on ESV, and INSTANTLY the view changes to compare these two texts. If you shift-click a third Bible, the screen splits again. Shift-click one of the already selected Bibles, and it immediately disappears from the comparison.

I think this would make it so much quicker and easier to make comparisons between various different Bibles, instead of having to go into the Compare List editor every time. It would also feel really satisfying to use!

While I'm here, may I say that I'm a designer and if you need any graphics at all I'd be happy to freely contribute.

I am also skilled in interactive GUI design, so if you would be interested in someone looking over the GUI and making suggestions for improvements, I would be very happy to do that. Though I'm sure you're probably busy enough without yet more changes! As far as I'm concerned, the only major change I really would like is a way to organize my Bible modules into groups!

I thank you for your suggestions. The Bible sets feature was not pursued when suggested years back, so I would not expect that addition to happen. Not sure about the other suggestion for instant compare. We are not working on any more features at this point. We are working toward a release of what we have now in beta. One area we are fixing is to do with proper rendering of right to left languages when displayed in poetic format.


Here are the changes and enhancements for version 6 that I see from the changelog

- [new]: in Bible view, Compare mode, when Bibles are arranged in rows, the title of the Bibles are now links and when clicked the Bible view switches to this Bible.
- [new]: added function to create new topic-links from bookmarks within a single topic:
- function is accessed from within the Bookmarks dialog -> All bookmarks tab.
- works for dictionary and book modules

- [...]: continuing from new feature of 1482 of topic-links from bookmarks:
- when creating a bookmark, the selected text now becomes the subject of the new bookmark. This makes it easier to later use this subject as the subject of the topic-link

- [new]: added the 'headings' switch as an option in verse.rules 'toggle' attribute: this means that a verse rule can now be toggled on/off when headings are on/off.

- [new]: added case.sensitive.word.index option in config table of dictionary/book modules: if set to 1, then lookups (and the wordindex) are case sensitive. When this option is set, the topics_wordindex is rebuilt and the index version is incremented to 5.

- [new] spell checking in book view user modules (testing)

- adding new 'Export Topics' function (Work in progress)

- [new]: added the 'paragraphs' switch as an option in verse.rules 'toggle' attribute: this means that a verse rule can now be toggled on/off when paragraph-mode is on/off.

- new version of RichView (viewer) is now used. Several changes and updates. The change was for better export support.

- reverted to using old rendering engine when running under Wine/Linux due to rendering issues

- added ability to export topics from book search results. Its now possible to export topics that match a search from different modules all at once.

- added support for option 'no.uniscribe=1' in '[general]' section in config.ini to turn-off uniscribe rendering engine in windows (it is turned off by default on linux/wine).
- 'no.unisribe=1' option added in 1502 caused some painting issues (black background flicker): it should be fixed.
- when exporting book search results from copyrighted (locked) modules, a maximum of 10% of topics count or 25 topics (smallest) are exported. These are actual topics, not links (meta records).

- fixed RV17 regression where shrinked images would not be smooth. They are not smooth, unless they are PNG transparent in which case they are still not smooth when scaled down. There shouldn't be a need for transparent images in the first place, so make sure images in modules are NOT transparent (they never need to be)
- saving config.ini is now crash-resistant; if something goes wrong during saving, the old config.ini is restored.

- Unlock keys dialog: extra spaces are being trimmed now to avoid unexpected behavior
- default font size for rtf text is now 10pts instead of 12pts
- RV17 regression: rtl text fix: HiSB in Hebrew (Gen) was broken when displaying transliteration (transliterated text word breaks were being displayed in wrong order)
- finalized transparent image handling (PNG): transparent PNGs are converted to non-transparent (with white background) when scaled. This will be the final behavior for tw6.

- images are now auto-resized in module properties dialog, in the about section, if this not not a user module.

- added support for downloading and installing spelling dictionaries via the 'Add Titles...' dialog. Requires version 6.

- fixed right-to-left Bible modules rendering of verse numbers: in a r2l Bible module if the text started with ltr text then the verse number would be merged with the ltr text thus appearing incorrectly. Now it should always appear on the right.

Search enhancement: when searching ignoring diacritics, the following characters are all considered equivalent:
- quotation mark u+0022
- apostrophe u+0027
- grave accent u+0060
- acute accent u+00b4
- left single quotation mark u+2018
- right single quotation mark u+2019
- left double quotation mark u+201c
- right double quotation mark u+201d

work-in-progress: adding functionality to check for new modules and display an extra menu/alert. Non-stable function at this point.
finalizing (almost) the check for new titles:
- added separate option to check for new titles (different from checking for new program version)
- refactored the auto-update to be more robust (less messages, more immediate)
- in 'Add titles' dialog, the links to select which titles to display were replaced with buttons to make it more obvious to the user
- the 'New Titles...' button always displays hint with the new modules, even if the global option to display hints is not checked
finalized function related to checking for new titles:
- 'New Titles...' button appears for all modules that have been added in the past 30 days
- when the user clicks the 'New Titles...' button, it will not appear again for one week
- the 'Download Modules' dialog now displays modules with an update when the user selects the to see new (last 30 days) titles

- added support for CI and CM tags for r2l modules

WADR, I'd like to add my vote for the "Bible Sets" feature. Frankly, it's one of only two improvements that interest me.

The other is the ability to easily search for things like "Peter's house."

Thank you very much for that, JG

I appreciate that organizing the Bible by sets won't be in the next version, but I hope it can be considered for future versions. It's not like an entirely new feature - it's already there for the Book View. The only "new" thing required would be the ability to assign category tags to the Bible modules. If necessary, I'd be happy to do that manually in a text editor.

And thank you Norrin for showing I'm not the only one who would like this feature

As for your other request… I'm curious what you mean? We can already type "Peter's house" in the search and get a result? (Matthew 18)

Just for the record (I have mentioned this in the past), I believe that one day, many years from now, I will have a major contribution to make to this software, though I can't give any details about it just yet. For the last 10 years, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, I have been working on a project, doing something with the Bible that has never been done before which makes it easier to read and to use. I believe it will become an integral part of Bible software in the future, and, when the time is right, I want to give exclusivity to TheWord, to make it even greater. Apologies for not being able to say more just now! But let us have our minds set on achieving great things in the name of Christ.

John 14:12
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."

A previous request for this feature had some suggestions that ones have found helpful
viewtopic.php?p=40217#p40217