I’m quite late on this one, for which I apply the preselected excuse that I have been very busy. I first noticed the change in name and the upgrade of the software when I upgraded my Ubuntu installation from 9.04 to 9.10. Then today I found a post on Xiphos at futurebible.org, and so I thought I’d link to it.
This open source Bible study package has been getting better and better over the years and if you aren’t afraid to buy a few premium books for it (ones you pay for), it can be excellent. Right now I’m lusting after the REB for Xiphos, (sorry, that is for e-Sword, which I have installed on a different machine) which I will buy soon (but I will buy it soon, just for e-Sword, rather than for Xiphos).
A notable new feature is the lookup of place names via BibleMap.org. You simply right-click on the place name and choose Lookup Selection -> Browse in BibleMap.org, and it will take your browser to the note on that location. This could be quite useful in studying. As is the trend in software, being connected to the internet is becoming more and more of an essential.
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Henry, I haven’t succeeded in getting Xiphos installed yet. BibleTime is very easy to install and use although there are a number of quirks and hassles. It’s actually a pretty crowded market for these seat of your pants operations. The question long-term is who is going to have the resources and stamina to keep developing their product.
For Bible translations in the rest of the world, the trend seems to be toward SWORD rather than e-sword.
David – Xiphos is based on SWORD. I had no trouble with it on Ubunutu but since it was automatically upgraded with the upgrade to 9.10, I didn’t really have to do anything. I have found e-Sword to be quite useful on my Windows machines, though as far as I know the modules are not interchangeable, which is too bad as there are some for e-Sword that are not available for SWORD.