Macro to help with converting eSword and TheWord modules

Bernhard
Bernhard Member Posts: 661 ✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

There is quite an active book builder community for eSword and TheWord that has put together thousands of books, mostly in the public domain, for use in these Bible programs. See links in the attached file for some download sources.

Using a free program called database2rtf you can convert these modules to RTF format. The attached Word macro file can take that file and prepare it for use as a Logos Personal Book. Instructions and links are inside the attachment. Resulting files might still need a lot of manual work (partly depending on the quality of the input file).

This will not convert Bible modules, use Bible Multi Converter instead: https://github.com/schierlm/BibleMultiConverter/releases

Please let me know if you find any problems with the macro and I will try to take care of them (as time permits).

 

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Comments

  • James Taylor
    James Taylor Member Posts: 1,408 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Bernard, I'm looking forward to giving this a test drive. Most of those resources (if not all) are Public Domain, are there any you've created, that came out well, that you'd be able to share here? 

    Logos 10  | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max

  • James Taylor
    James Taylor Member Posts: 1,408 ✭✭✭

    Bernhard said:

    Using a free program called database2rtf you can convert these modules to RTF format. The attached Word macro file can take that file and prepare it for use as a Logos Personal Book....Please let me know if you find any problems with the macro and I will try to take care of them (as time permits).

    So far I'm 0/3 in successfully converting these :-(

    Logos 10  | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max

  • Bernhard
    Bernhard Member Posts: 661 ✭✭

    Sorry to hear. Was the issue with database2rtf or the macro?

    If with database2rtf, make sure the modules are not encrypted and in case of TheWord modules make sure you have prepared them as described in the program.

  • Justin Gatlin
    Justin Gatlin Member Posts: 2,049 ✭✭✭

    biblesupport.com is the heart of the E-Sword module making community. David Guzik's sermons and Ray Stedman's sermons make me excited to try your macro. I find modules much easier to tag than Logos Personal Books. If it works well, that is a nice way to make resources available to those in my church who don't want to pay for Logos, while still allowing me to use them in my main software. Awesome!

  • Robert M. Warren
    Robert M. Warren Member Posts: 2,452 ✭✭✭

    Thank you, Bernard. I'm quite eager to try this out this weekend.

    macOS (Logos Pro - Beta) | Android 13 (Logos Stable)

    Smile

  • Liam
    Liam Member Posts: 1,439 ✭✭✭

    These look promising! But I'm not sure if they'll work on a Mac. It would be super awesome if any of you would be willing to post your work on this in this thread! Thanks to any who do!

  • Bernhard
    Bernhard Member Posts: 661 ✭✭

    Liam said:

    These look promising! But I'm not sure if they'll work on a Mac. It would be super awesome if any of you would be willing to post your work on this in this thread! Thanks to any who do!

    As far as I know, Word for Mac does not run Macros. Pretty sure the other program needed (database2rtf) is also just for Windows. If you have specific out-of-copyright books that are available in e-Sword or theWord, let me know and I'll see if I can run them through the converter for you (as time allows).

    As far as posting converted books here, I'll probably do that with some resources, but I find that

    • some resources shared on http://biblesupport.com and other sites are actually still in copyright. They have permission to post them, but that of course does not extend to other websites
    • for a couple of resources I was looking at posting, the (US) copyright status seems to be questionable and I don't want to get into discussions about that.
    • a lot of the public domain resources available are also published by Logos, so we shouldn't post them as PB in the forum.
  • Liam
    Liam Member Posts: 1,439 ✭✭✭

    Bernhard said:

    As far as I know, Word for Mac does not run Macros. Pretty sure the other program needed (database2rtf) is also just for Windows. If you have specific out-of-copyright books that are available in e-Sword or theWord, let me know and I'll see if I can run them through the converter for you (as time allows).

    Bernhard, thank you! I don't know the esword database well, but maybe I'll check it out! Agreed! It totally makes sense that we shouldn't post anything here that is sold by Logos. 

  • Bernhard
    Bernhard Member Posts: 661 ✭✭

    Bernhard said:

    As far as I know, Word for Mac does not run Macros. Pretty sure the other program needed (database2rtf) is also just for Windows.

    Sorry, I was just reading online that Macros can run on a Mac with some restrictions. Maybe someone can try my Macros in Word for Mac and report back. If you do that, please let us know what version of Word you are on.

    I don't think there is an easy way to run database2rtf on a Mac though (the program to convert the books to rtf before my macro can handle them).