For more than a decade I’ve wanted an easy way to make Bible references like these: Amos 9:7; Ruth 4:7 link to the Bible or to popup the verses cited, I put a lot of work into doing that for the Amos commentary.
Now, thanks to the nice folk at Logos, who I expect will benefit from their kindness through lots of links 😉 I have been able to add this facility to this blog, and to my others,. It automatically takes most Bible references I type and uses Sean’s clever Bibleref system to add the verse as a popup, and make the reference a link to the passage. My only two disappointments are
- that apparently it does this without rewriting the source code for the page, so probably Google etc. will not be able to use this semantic markup 🙁 maybe in a later implementation?
- and that somehow though I asked for the version to be TNIV it shows up as New Living… maybe this is a temporary glitch, rather than a sign from heaven as to which really is the New Inspired Version to follow the NIV which followed the AV.
Thanks for the post, Tim.
A few comments:
1. It actually isn’t using Sean Boisen’s Bibleref markup. It does support it, though, if you choose to use it, and it can actually be beneficial in instances like John 1 where RefTagger will skip it since there’s a chance that it’s not a Bible reference.
2. The fact that RefTagger doesn’t actually change the source code is a benefit for two reasons: (1) it keeps the code lighter, and (2) it makes removal of RefTagger easy (no need to undo all the changes that RefTagger made). That said, we’re open to considering ways to integrate RefTagger more with Sean’s Bibleref.
3. We only have permission for two pop-up versions now: NLT and KJV. We’re working on licensing others.
On 1: sorry I missunderstood.
On 2: hmm, I can see the benefit of this, though I would love to be able to automatically, or even easily add BibleRef markup permanently…
On 3: Ah, the dreaded “Our Bible is copyright!” sin rears its ugly head! One day a greedy and unchristian publisher will recognise that freely distributing electronic Bibles actually increases the sales of their “product” till then God bless those who see their goal as distributing God’s word – well done New Living!