Sunday, July 20, 2008

E-sword

Linux and E-sword, what could one have asked for as a Christian than this great Bible program to work on Linux?!

I know I already covered it, but since last year allot has changed for the better, and now you can even install additions and modules directly into E-sword without using a Windows PC to first extract the modules, great!

There are alternatives, but none of them boast even remotely as large a library of collections and Bibles as E-sword. Allow me to copy from an Ubuntu forum post and shed some light on how to get this going in Linux:

Install Wine
Follow instruction below, choose your distro:

Code:
http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You could download the program and other addons here:

http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html

Create "bottle" for Esword:

Code:
wineprefixcreate --prefix .wine_Esword
Install the program:

Make sure the setup798.exe is in you home folder. Otherwise, you should cd to the location first, for example "cd Desktop" if the setup797.exe is on your Desktop.

Code:
 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine setup798.exe
Download msls31.dll to your ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32 from here:

http://www.dlldump.com

(Search msls31.dll and download it. If you download it somewhere else, you need to copy it to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32)


Copy riched20.dll
from ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/Program Files/e-Sword to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32

Code:
 cp ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/Program\ Files/e-Sword/riched20.dll ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/system32
Make sure all the above dlls in lower case. If they are in upper case, rename them to lower case.

In winecfg set riched20.dll and oleaut32.dll to native. IMPORTANT: Do not run winecfg from menu, as it would run default winecfg. Please use terminal to run winecfg for this bottle:

Code:
env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword winecfg
Press the Libraries tab > type riched20.dll > press add > press edit > choose Native (windows).
Do the same for oleaut32.dll.

Type:

Code:
 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine "C:\Program Files\e-Sword\e-Sword.exe"
to run it. Or, you could use the launcher created on desktop.

To install addons, run in terminal:

Make sure the bbe.exe is in you home folder. Otherwise, you should cd to the location first, for example "cd Desktop" if the bbe.exe is on your Desktop.

Code:
 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword wine bbe.exe
If it shows only blue screen, press [alt+tab] to switch to installation windows. You may need to press [alt+tab] again every time after you press next.

The above example is to install bbe.exe. You could install other addons using above overrides, just replace bbe.exe.


Change Icon on Launcher.
The launcher created already use e-Sword icon. But if you want to use other icon, follow below step:
Right click the launcher and choose properties.
After that click on the wine icon, it will open a windows.
Navigates to the icon file you want.
If the icon you want did not appear in the navigation windows, change the extension to png.
You could download and use attached 2 icons as well (original e-sword icons) if you like.


Add more fonts

To add more fonts, copy whatever fonts you have to ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/fonts.
If it still not appear in e-sword, it might be due to file permission problem. What you have to do is to open terminal (application>accesories>terminal), and then issue below command:

Code:
chmod 777 -R ~/.wine_Esword/drive_c/windows/fonts
The fonts should now available for E-sword to use.

Increase font size for E-sword menu
If you find e-Sword application font itself (ie. the font for "menu, edit, format, etc") is too small, what you can do is:

Open terminal (Application>Accesories>Terminal)
Open wine configuration editor from terminal:

Code:
 env WINEPREFIX=~/.wine_Esword winecfg
Click graphics tab.

At below, there is a screen resolution slider, the default is 96 dpi. Slide the slider to higher dpi. Be carefull though to use too big value as GlennW reported the winecfg become to big to fit to the screen when he use maximum value (120 dpi). Click apply and then ok.

Open your e-sword, if it is too big, you could repeat the above steps, adjusting the slider to whatever number (between 96 to 120).

Troubleshooting
If you encounter a weird problem, possibly there are some wine processes in the memory. To get rid of these processes, you could
1. reboot your computer,
or
2. kill wine related processes using system monitor:
From menu: system >> Sytem monitor >> click "processes" tab.
Kill all processes related to wine, including all exe processes.
or
3. Open terminal, and run below command (one at a time):
Code:
killall wine
killall wineserver
killall wine-preloader

With many thanks to the Ubuntu forums:
http://sudan.ubuntuforums.com/showthread.php?t=404042

Matrix incompatibilities

How true!
We need a nice big "Firefox" logo in the sky!