Freely-Given.org DBL Bible bundles

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More than you wanted to know about DBL Bible bundles

Digital Bible Library (DBL) Bible bundles were defined by the Every Tribe, Every Nation (ETEN) alliance. The text bundles include the Bible text in USX (XML) format as well as licence information, metadata such as titles and status information, and a stylesheet for the text (all in XML), plus some non-XML metadata files (versification in a custom text file, and language details in the INI format). They are usually created by a program such as Paratext.

DBL documentation

There is some incomplete documentation of the format here and more specifically for the text bundle here.

Sample DBL bundles

Thanks to eBible.org, you can access some obsolete DBL bundles that are suitable for testing the format, i.e., the actual Bible text is not guaranteed to be the most up-to-date. You can try ASV, RV, WEB British Edition, World Messianic Bible (WMB), and WMB British Edition, and Tongan.

Access to more DBL data is only provided to select organisations through the application for a Library card. (Freely-Given.org has been turned down twice in recent years, so consequently our DBL import has only been able to have very limited testing.)

Submitting DBL bundles to the Bible Drop Box

The DBL text bundle is already a Zip file, so simply upload it directly into the Bible Drop Box. (There will be no need to upload a separate metadata file because that information is already included inside the bundle.)

Test data: If you are able to provide any kinds of bundles for automated testing purposes, please contact us and let us know the details so we can improve the internationalisation and ruggedness of the software for everyone’s benefit.