Release: v9.3.0 (31df4a78)

⚠️ All commands will have to re-propagate through Discord before being functional. This can take up to an hour. ⚠️

📋 Changelog

🏗️ Breaking changes

• Rename /dailyverseset to /setdailyverse, /dailyverserole to /setdailyverserole, and /dailyverseclear to /cleardailyverse. (bd8d6627)

🚀 Features

• Restored language support to the fullest extent (see more info in remarks), supporting as of writing English (US), English (UK), and Esperanto. (5b6c9898)
• AutomaticServices and Backend now broadcast WATCHDOG=1 to systemd as a keep-alive measure. (778200c7)
• Added optout functionality to backend. Users can now optout of verse processing in line with our terms of conditions. (978b9192)
• Added expando verse functionality to API.Bible versions. (11ed2667)
• Restored string input in an optional parameter for /set{server}display and /setbrackets. (4596097f)
• Restored API.Bible name fetching and overhauled parsing to be aligned with BibleGateway results. (4596097f)
• Restored Patriarchal Text of 1904 (PAT1904). (4596097f)
• Added support for API.Bible versions in /booklist. (4596097f)
• Changed sources for American Standard Version (ASV), GOD’S WORD (GW), Orthodox Jewish Bible (OJB), and all Biblica-published versions.
• Added Berean Standard Bible (BSB), Canisiusvertaling 1939 (NLD1939), Evangelical Heritage Version (EHV), and Literal Standard Version (LSV).
• Removed the old, unmaintained KJV and replaced it with the existing KJVA for quality improvements, the KJVA is now the formal KJV in BibleBot.

🐞 Bug Fixes

• Added many, many workarounds to support Brenton’s Septuagint (ELXX) and Septuagint (LXX). The ELXX should work properly and the LXX the same minus its own Greek book names (in /booklist). (4596097f)
• Fixed a bug where in-reference versions weren’t getting acknowledged if they contained a number. (0f9d5835)

📝 Remarks

Since the Great Outage of 2021, the releases of the bot have been considered beta, because we did not have total feature parity with BibleBot v8 (back when we only had 25,000 servers!). With this release, BibleBot’s functionality is now beyond equivalent to v8, so we’re dropping the “-beta!”

This isn’t the only change regarding our versioning also, with this release we are now moving to Semantic Versioning with Conventional Commits. In essence, our versioning is now cohesive. Moving forward, versions will follow the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH convention, where breaking changes (like the one above) would cause the MAJOR number to increase (i.e. 9 becomes 10), added features would cause the MINOR number to increase (3 becomes 4), and bug fixes or similar patches would cause the PATCH number to increase (0 becomes 1). However, these numbers only change when we create a release. Technically speaking we are very late to using Semantic Versioning and having us start at 9.3.0 is not necessarily an “orthodox” practice, but I’m not retconning version numbers!

What this means for you as end users is that you might see changelogs being posted more often, and the bot’s reported version increasing much more than what has been the norm for the nearly 10 years we’ve been around. Just keep in mind that major releases are still major with breaking changes, so we aren’t going to be making major releases super-regularly, just a bit more than what has been the usual practice. Minor releases will be more numerous, and patch releases even more so.

Some comments on interface languages: the first is that if you’d like your language available, consider joining the Crowdin project where you can help us provide BibleBot in your language! The second is that while they have returned, there are some limitations. The upper 90% of interface language translations are made available in whatever languages we have available. The 10% is with command {names, descriptions, parameters, parameter descriptions} and with responses like staff-only permission errors. Currently, these 10% are subject to limitations. These are limited to languages that Discord itself supports, in fact they are the only pieces that will be automatically translated to whatever your Discord client’s language is (assuming we have it in the bot), the rest rely upon your /setlanguage preferences. There isn’t a whole lot we can do about this, but we do intend for the response messages to align with /setlanguage in the future. For the aforementioned command translations, we unfortunately can’t provide more than what Discord makes available. As a result, we’ve held off on having command names translated until a future update while we consider whether it’s a good and not-confusing idea. For command descriptions and parameters, we will make these available where we are able (and have the translations available). You can find which languages Discord supports for these pieces here. You can find the interface languages that BibleBot supports with /listlanguages.

All of us thank you for your support. If you find any bugs, be sure to let us know on the support server or by filing a bug report (requires a free GitLab account). If you wish to support our work, check out our #stewardship channel on the support server or pitch in to our annual fundraiser. If you wish to support our developers directly, reach out to @srp on Discord.

In Christ,
Rdr. Seraphim and all of us at Kerygma Digital