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David Cox's How to create an e-Sword Devotional Module

 Overview  

What I will do on this page is break down the process into a number of phases. Please note that in the e-Sword structure, a Bible file is a MS Access database ending in the extension of *.dev. It basically has a record in this database for every day of the year.

Format of a DEV (e-Sword Devotional File Format)

A DEV is a simple Microsoft Access file format with the extension of DEV. Note that these can be password protected, although this protection is very easily broken. If you want to see or work on a dev, change the extension to the Access database extension, mdb (Microsoft Jet DataBase). Remember to change it back to DEV before copying it into the e-Sword default folder.

In Access what you will see is two tables. Modern database programs actually house many files in a single "database" file. These are all in what is considered a "container" file. That way you can keep the files together without trying to keep track of which file goes with what when you copy and backup stuff. But this is not necessary for you to understand at this point, just information.

A DEV has 2 files, both tables (databases). One is called "Devotions" and the other "Details".

"Details" File Format - 3 fields, "Description" Text field, "Abbreviation" Text field, "Comments" Text Field for the Copyright information although that is not accessible from the program.

Description - is the tool tip popup screen text.

Abbreviation - is the text for the tab in the Devotional panel.

Comments - This should be where the copyright information goes in your file.

Note that this table has only one record which contains information. I doubt if a second record would appear anywhere if you added one.

"Devotions" File Format - 4 fields, "ID" Automatic Numeric field, "Month" Numeric field, "Day" Numeric Field, "Devotion" Memo field.

ID - an automatically generated field with the record number, unused by esword.

Month - Month of the year.

Day - Day of the Month.

Devotion - the devotional text displayed.

There is not much more to it. If you can program in Access, you just generate a file fitting these fields, and then import the text.

 Step 1 - Determine the format of your original data.

The first step in making a module is to analyze your original data and to determine if the format of your original is in a form that the module will accept. First of all, if it is a devotional, then it is probably okay. I say probably because there are devotional books set up on only a 31 day schedule which do not fit the Devotional module very well. If you have one of these books you are making into a module, then you have several choices to make.

(1) Repeat the 31 day information every day of the year. (I would not advise this.)

(2) Find more devotional material (best if by the same author) and combine it into a year reading program.

(3) Make a TOP module instead of a DEV module. The TOP format is like a book so it is better and more flexible.

There is nothing stopping you from making a single 30 day devotional, but remember, whatever month you put it in, all the rest of the months will be blank, and the person will think it is a blank module unless specifically told otherwise outside of the module.

 Step 2 - Text preparation

 COPYRIGHT TEST:  I assume that either your material is out of copyright or is your own personal creation.

I would recommend that you first prepare your text in a Microsoft Word document. This is because it is much easier to work over the text in Word than in any of the utilities that are presently available.

You will need to have the date (no actual day of week information because this will change from year to year), but the month and the day of the month. Remember that e-Sword devotional is built around a complete year, so add February 29 for the leap years.

I would recommend that once you have fixed everything in your Word document the way you want, to go back and place the proper RTF coding in this document. Remember that in the actual Microsoft Access database, the information is a field in that database, and it needs to be interpreted (via RTF) to be displayed, and the display will be just text with absolutely no formatting. So you will want paragraph separations and other type things that will make your text "look sharp". Probably the most used of these RTF coding is the following:

General information - In RTF there is a way to mark off text using a curly bracket {}. So the text within the two curly brackets have the formatting of the beginning and ending code.

italics - italics on = {\i   italics off = \i0}

Sample code (remember the closing is \i and the zero, not "o")

{\i This is same italics \0}

bold - bold on {\b  bold off \b0}

End of line Paragraph marks - \PAR

e-Sword Tooltips of References - Remember that the format for e-Sword to show a tooltip on a Bible reference is simply the correctly formatted reference. There is no special code. The correct format for a e-Sword Scripture reference is the 3 character book code, and underline, the chapter, a colon, and the verse, or verse range.

Sample Gen_12:1

It is important to remember that the valid book abbreviation is extremely important, and it is not what you want, but what e-Sword dictates, and this may vary from version to version. Jas is James, and Jam_1:1 will get you nothing. As far as I remember off hand, only Philippians has changed the official e-Sword abbreviation. (To see what is what, open e-Sword and look at the Bible tree window, normally by default on the left hand side of the program, and you will see all the book abbreviations.)

There is a help for automatically converting books references to the proper e-Sword tooltip format. This help comes in the form of Craig White's e-Sword Med, which has a button to automatically convert references to this format. I would recommend that you use this rather than doing this by hand. I will advise you that Craig's utility is not extensive in the sense that there is a lot of references that will stump it and not be converted. Part of the making of a module is to proofread it, and this means going through and checking all your Bible references to make sure they are converted.

Okay so you now have your Bible references all in proper e-Sword format, but in e-Sword they still will not look "normal" (Green underlined). How do I make them look like that? This is done by RTF coding also. What we are going to do is to mark a section of text using the curly brackets to begin and end, and then make the color green, and underlined. The proper RTF code is simply {\cf11 \ul Gen_12:1 }

That was pretty simple. Now if you have 365 days with an average of 2-3 verses per day, all you have to do is to mark each reference by hand :(

No that is not good. We can use Craig White's e-Sword Med but it won't make it green underlined. Craig utility is a great utility and we will use it shortly, but I would not use it at this point for this. From here go to my Microsoft Word Macro Help pages.

 Step 3 - Text touch up

You probably need to do a little touch up on the text.

Finally, please consider sending me a copy or at least the URL of where you are uploading your module so that I can add it to our database of available modules.

visits since July 14, 2009