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Fr. Rusty Matheny

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Just an honest question: No agenda other than needing to know.

Are we ever going to have other resources such as books, the teachings/writings of the great Saints of the Church, Catholic Resources ( beyond the few listed already ), Orthodox Resources.

All the tools for Greek and Hebrew studies are fine and wonderful, needed, and Accordance are the best tools available , hands down.

 

But there is more.

The very people using these tools, if they were to write something incredible through their studies- could it ever be seen in Accordance if it was not in Greek or Hebrew or a Commentary set?

 

The Church is more than just greek and hebrew studies, the Church , as the body of Christ , the Saints, have written great things, the great Scholars , the great Contemplatives, the great Monastics, I could go on and on.

 

Each time a buy another book, that will not be searchable, handy, that I cannot use readily in the midst of a study, I just cringe.

 

Please Accordance, there is a wider context of people who have needs in Biblical/Church study software beyond another Commentary. ( which half of which are just trying to compete with each other for market share and really are not saying anything at all).

 

This is the best "software" out there, please give us a wider set of materials.

Please let me know if this is going to be a possibility ? Reality?

Shall I hope?

 

Thank you,

 

Rusty+

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We have been trying for years to get Catholic and Orthodox resources, but have not been able to finalize any agreements, or sometimes even make the right contact in a large publishing house. We are always open to leads, contacts, and suggestions.

 

As for good writings by our users: there is no end to the making of books, and we could not, even if we wanted, compete with a Kindle or other platform that simply provides a huge range of ebooks. We try to keep our focus on Biblical Studies and the tools that will assist those studies. Accordance modules are not simply ebooks; they are heavily marked up (behind the scenes) to allow for the indexing and intelligent searching that makes them so functional in Accordance. Converting an etext is a major investment, and we need to be selective in where we invest our resources. However, we are willing to consider any material from almost any source.

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We try to keep our focus on Biblical Studies and the tools that will assist those studies.

 

I can only encourage you to pursue this path

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Amen. As a Lutheran, I want to second those of other traditions who lay claim to the best that has been passed on to us by the fathers and mothers of the church.

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Thank you for the kind reply Helen ( and everyone else ).

So the issue ( if I understand correctly ) is in being able to get these resources in tangible/functional and affordable manner?

 

Perhaps those of us who desire these resources ( which are resources for the study of the Biblical Text btw ) need to be "pro-active" in finding ways to make them available to Accordance.

 

Not sure how to go about doing that, but hey, there were lots of things I didn't know how to do until I started trying-smile.

 

Thanks Helen,

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Rusty+

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Hi Rusty,

 

Just some thoughts on what you mentioned. On the condition the text is non-copyright one way of making it available is to create a user tool. Theoretically this user tool could then be shared with others. I assume this was the thinking behind the Accordance Exchange, although I'm not sure if that is being used now.

 

Of course how easy it is to create the user tool really depends on the complexity of the text being imported. One thing you find out is that even on fairly simple texts it can be quite time consuming. It is then that you realise the time and effort that must go in to developing a 'real' Accordance tool.

 

There are some odd idiosyncrasies with user tools in terms of formatting and there are a number of steps to follow but it can be done. The steps are something like

 

1. Get the non-copyright etext

2. Import that into a word processor that can save it as HTML (e.g. Word)

3. Spent some effort in Word making sure you have the correct headings/scripture references etc.

4. Save it as an HTML file

5. Import the HTML file into Accordance as a user tool

6. Review the user tool format. Before changing anything on the user tool itself it is worth checking whether there are things you got wrong when creating the Word document which would be easier to fix there. If that is the case update the Word document and go from step 4 again.

7. When happy with the import then there will still be formatting issues in the user tool that need sorting out (often with carriage returns and the formatting of headings)

 

There is a podcast which includes some info on this.

 

Obviously there is the issue of time but then the issues tend to be

1. Sharing it with others who might be interested in the same tool

2. Not wasting time with multiple people creating the same tool

 

I assume the Accordance Exchange is to solve 1 but appears not to be updated lately. The second could be solved with some form of web page to allow people to list what user tools they are working on/would like to have but of course that would have to be maintained etc.

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