Last 1.* release before developing for 2.* (1.9.12)

Originally the main feature of version 2.0 will be support for PDB files. This was pushed back to 1.9.* because I was afraid it would cause many problems because of the dynamic nature of the input. Previously the Bible text data were always internal, checked for consistency and with a fixed number of books, chapters and verses. By allowing users to open PDB files, the number of books, chapters, and verses may vary from versions to versions. It ended up that quite a lot of crashes being reported by users that could be fixed (of course not all) little by little.

English Standard Version, with italics

Other planned features for 2.x are:

• Bookmark organization. Probably will use tags instead of folders (essentially, exclusive tags).




• Bookmark screen to include Bookmarks, Annotations, and Highlights.


• Search bookmarks and annotations.


• Sort bookmarks and annotations.


• Full screen view (press menu to navigate).


• Option to change red text color.

Unsure features:

• Multi-select verses for copy and share.


• Temporary-highlighting selected verse (for example after navigating or clicking on parallel verses).

I'm still not sure what's the best way for the bookmark screen. Please leave any comments about this or any other things :) Thanks!

For Tablets (1.9.8)

In the past few weeks there are many small updates that increased the version number from 1.9.2, one-by-one, until today, 1.9.8.

Historically I intended the Bible app to be compatible with Android 1.5 and up, so no one is left behind. However, according to this chart, Android 1.5 users are only 1.9%, and most of them are old phone users, which they most likely have downloaded this or some other Bible apps, and by not supporting 1.5 anymore, won't affect them so much.

Starting 1.9.8, only Android 1.6 and up are supported. Since 1.9.7 I have also changed the target SDK version to 3.1 (Android Honeycomb), but some people gave feedback to my email saying that the menus are not accessible. It happened that when I request no title bar, Android 3.* will also hide the action bar where the menus are all located by default. Hence, the app will now detect the Android version and not hide the title bar on tablets.

A screenshot from the emulator (I do not own an Android tablet):

The menu items look like toolbar buttons on the top of the screen. Other menu items such as Suggest, Help, and About are accessible from the overflow menu on the top-right corner.

PDB file reader! (1.9.2 -- 2.0 beta)

After months of work, finally a new version is released! Instead of supporting only a handful list of translations/versions, now you can add in .pdb (PalmBible+) files! The core reader is made by Yohanes Nugroho, who made SymbianBible and Bible plus for Blackberry.

A screen to manage Bible versions

However, once you added a PDB file to the app, you don't straight away see the Bible text. The app will convert the PDB file into a format easily understood by the app (.yes format). You can choose the encoding of the PDB file. If you open an English or some European/ Russian languages, probably UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1 are the correct encoding. You will see a preview of the text decoded with your selected encoding.

Select the encoding from the drop-down and you will see a preview

After some time (please be patient while the PDB file is read and converted!) it will appear on the list. If you see in the list there are checkboxes. Those checkboxes indicate whether the version is shown on the version list, accessible from the main menu -> Versions.

Instant version selection after you select versions that appear on the list

I hope this will be useful to those who have a personal library of .pdb files, as well as those who are new to .pdb files.

Some technical information, may be of interest to you :)

• Apocrypha/ Deuterocanonical books are now supported. This only happens if you open a .pdb file that contain those books. Now the list of books in a version is flexible. If you create a bookmark on a book that is only contained in version A but not version B, when you see the list of bookmarks while opening version B, the book names will be shown as [?] or [number] and the text will be shown as [?].
• Greek/ Hebrew text is partially supported. AFAIK, right-to-left text are not yet supported in Android, and some Greek characters are missing. By the way, Greek/ Hebrew .pdb files are identified by the filename. If the filename starts with "q", it's Hebrew, if "z" it's Greek. 
• When you open a PDB file, it is converted to .yes file, stored in /sdcard/bible/yes/ with prefix "pdb-", such as "pdb-128de39a-1.yes". You don't actually need the .pdb files anymore. 
• Searching a version from PDB files is a bit slower than normal. The reason is, searching uses case-insensitive matching, and in order to support non-ascii characters, Java's toLowerCase is called, which is slower than manual lower-casing of ascii text.
• Certain book numbers from the PDB files are recognized and translated to the app's native numbering. The app's native numbering starts from the Old Testament, then New Testament, then the additional books according to PalmBible+ documentation. Books with book numbers not in the known list are currently discarded.

This will be released first as the Indonesian version, and some days later as the English version. The version should be 2, but I want to pre-release as 1.9.2, because I afraid this app is not as stable as it should be due to so many internal changes!

Thanks for 50k+ downloads (Indonesian version) and 165k+ downloads (English version)! I hope this app is useful for Bible readers in the world!

Preview of version 2 - Managing Versions

The Bible for Android will have a significant changes with the release of version 2. One of the notable features is the ability to add in more versions, both provided by us (.yes files) or your existing .pdb files. You will be able to enable/disable displaying the versions from the list, because when you have a lot of versions, you wouldn't want to scroll just to select one version. So, this is the screen to manage the versions.

Oh yes, and this feature will make into the English version. (Currently the English version of the app doesn't support any multiple versions).

On the bottom, there will be "Open existing file" option that allows you to select a file (.yes or .pdb) and you will be able to read tens of versions, like ESV, ASV, FAYH, etc.

Whatever mentioned here is not guaranteed to be in the final version, but please give feedbacks if any, thanks!

Version 1.4.4 release (Indonesian and English)

We have just released version 1.4.4 both for Indonesian (Alkitab) and English (Quick KJV Bible).


Hendra Sentono helped me in getting a correction document from Yayasan Lembaga SABDA. The result is that we have a lot of corrections to the Indonesian text, about 100
corrections! (20-30 of which are important, and the others are like "engkaupun" becomes "engkau pun").

And, the corrected Indonesian text has been released at http://code.google.com/p/teks-alkitab/ I hope this is useful for those who want raw text for further processing (create an application, etc).

For English version, this version fixes a problem that scrolling using volume buttons emits a sound after releasing the keys, and the book names now no longer uses underscores instead of spaces.

Batak Toba version (Indonesian 1.4.2)

Another kind guy Toga J. Siahaan requested me to include the Batak Toba version in the Bible app (for this case, this will only be in the Indonesian version.) He kindly gave me the BibleDatabase.org format that I asked, unexpectedly. I was very happy with his dedication. So I cannot wait any longer to release the Batak Toba version of the Bible, available as an add-on on the Indonesian Bible. (by the way, Alkitab (Indonesian Bible) has also an English interface, if you need it).

Here is the Bible in Batak Toba. The first five books are named 1-5 Musa (Moses).

A lot of Indonesian corrections (1.4.1)

A kind guy called Hendra Sentono emailed me his collection of Bible text errors that are found in the Indonesian Terjemahan Baru version. The list consisted of about 30 items, and it has now been applied to the latest Indonesian version, 1.4.1. Update it from the Android Market as usual!

(I will definitely release the source text into the public, just not yet. In any case, just email me if you want the source text for use in your application.)

The KJV add-on version has also been updated with red text =)

Note for KJV add-on users prior to version 1.4.1: If you want to have red letters in KJV, you will need to manually delete this file on the SD Card: bible/yes/kjv.yes. Restart the Bible app and you will be asked to download the KJV add-on again when you select KJV from the Versions menu.