                           STUDY BIBLE NEWS
                      News as of August 28, 1994
                      --------------------------

   PLEASE IGNORE ALL PHONE NUMBERS AND ADDRESSES IN THE .INF FILES.

HOW TO REACH:
=============

   Most important of all please note my new BBS phone number. The new
   number is in North Kansas City is 816-842-6654. Since CDs last
   forever, the phone number may be old by the time you read this. 

   The latest version of the OS/2 Study Bible will always be available
   on Compuserve. That is the place I connect to most often. My ID there
   is 72020,613. 

   I also have an Internet mail box at rfortier@fileshop.com.  I will
   update the hobbes.nmsu.edu internet set with the latest OS/2 version.

PLANS:
======

   Since the September 1993 release of the OS/2 Study Bible there has
   not been any new releases.

   One of the main motivations for writing the program was to gain more
   experience in writing OS/2 programs. Recently at work the emphasis
   has moved away from OS/2 and towards Windows. Therefore the future of
   the Study Bible has been reevaluated. With the coming of Windows 4.0
   it seems that Microsoft will have a multitasking operating system
   that could rival OS/2. OS/2 has not caught on even though it is the
   best PC operating system on the market today.

   So I am looking at developing a multiplatform version of the Study
   Bible.  One which can be recompiled to work in both the Windows and
   OS/2 families.  I plan to use the Borland Object Window Library (OWL)
   to accomplish the portability. Currently Borland has not released the
   OS/2 version of the OWL libraries and so all early work will be done
   for the Windows platform.  Borland plans on releasing the OS/2
   libraries around the end of 1994 with its AppWare compilers.

   The next development of the program will be written to run on a
   Windows NT/WIN32s platform. That will put me in a good position when
   Windows 4.0 arrives. Then when Borland makes their OS/2 release I
   should hopefully be able to easily port it back to OS/2. Since
   Windows and C++ development is new to me I don't anticipate any
   new wide releases in 1994.

   One of the goals of the new system will be to enable the usage of
   non-English bible translations. This will require a different file
   structure for all of the files. I will try to make it so that the
   files you already have will be compatible with the new version but I
   cannot guarantee this. Since you will have the ability to compile
   your own text files as in the OS/2 Study Bible Compiler this should
   not create a great hardship on anyone. 

   I can only guess as to a release date of the NT version. I have not
   yet done any serious design specifications on it. I also will be
   coding this in C++ and this is new to me. I would be very surprised
   if I could get the first beta version released by the end of the
   year.

   There are no plans to release any copyrighted translations with this
   release. But since the file structure will support multiple languages
   then I should be able to support the Spanish, German, French, Hebrew
   and Greek translations along with the KJV. It could be a
   possibility that once I have both platforms available with a few
   translations on it that I might look into releasing a CD version.

Frequent Questions:
===================
   Registration: One of the frequent questions I get is about
   registration. The program in its current release is freeware. But due
   to its ministry some feel obligated to help support it. Send me an
   email and I will give you my current mailing address. There is no set
   contribution. It is not tax-deductible either. And of course you can
   ignore this paragraph if you wish.

   Bugs: There are bugs in this version (released one year ago) that
   will never be fixed. The bugs will be avoided in the new Windows,
   then OS/2 version. Most obvious is that online help does not work.
   All bug fixes will have to wait for the new version.
   
Rick Fortier
August 28, 1994

Study Bible BBS at 816-842-6654
Compuserve 72020,613
Internet rfortier@fileshop.com

