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Question on searches using english commentaries


WomanoftheHouse

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Hey, WOTH (thanks for the abbreviation, Ken) - The 60 minute trial does not mean that you can only play with Accordance for 60 minutes. It means that after 60 minutes you have to quit it and restart, but you can do that indefinitely. That gives a prospective Accordance users a chance to "see what's under the hood" before buying.

 

Watching the podcasts, starting with those released since version 10 came out, is a smart way to go. I have watched some of them multiple times to remind myself how to go about doing something. Though I can get Accordance to do what I want (sometimes with help from the forums and podcasts), I'm still always learning new things. That is good, not bad!

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Thanks everybody! You've answered my questions! And Julie, thanks for clarifying on the demo. See I thought I was going to have to uninstall and reinstall it or something complicated. I was saving up the 60 minutes, lol! And y'all don't know HOW HAPPY my dh will be that Accordance can indeed read the text. Actually, that goes beyond Logos, because Logos only said isolated words. That's a huge help for him to have that option.

 

And Julie, I've been chewing on your comment about the instructors and whatnot using Accordance. I havne't had a chance yet to share it with my dh, but it's definitely fascinating to me. I did have a chance to finish my tallying, and it came out basically even (with $100 each way) except for the Baxter issue. Since The Directory is available for free online, and since the price difference to get it in a Logos package is pretty significant (like the cost of an ipad, no matter how I tallied it), and since it's really the sort of thing that's more suited to *reading* than parallel reading with other commentaries, I think that's the way he's going to go.

 

If I have more questions, I'll bop back! Thanks! :)

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Hi WOTH,

it's worth noting that you can make your own user tools of almost any properly formatted e-text. In fact there are quite a few already on our Accordance Exchange (though sadly not the Baxter "Directory". it may be beyond hubby's abilities to do it for himself, but it is definitely possible. These texts are then fully searchable and certainly readable on both the Mac platform and the iOS platform. Integration is usually a good thing.

 

As a bit of a long shot, is there anyone out there willing to have a look at making a user tool of the directory? Is there a freely available e-text? If so, let's try and get it in the Exchange - unless there are plans to get it in the main module bank...

 

Julie, still trying to figure out how I can get to Tennessee from Sydney! (yes, I know there are aeroplanes!)

 

Thanks

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Hi WOTH,

it's worth noting that you can make your own user tools of almost any properly formatted e-text. In fact there are quite a few already on our Accordance Exchange (though sadly not the Baxter "Directory". it may be beyond hubby's abilities to do it for himself, but it is definitely possible. These texts are then fully searchable and certainly readable on both the Mac platform and the iOS platform. Integration is usually a good thing.

 

As a bit of a long shot, is there anyone out there willing to have a look at making a user tool of the directory? Is there a freely available e-text? If so, let's try and get it in the Exchange - unless there are plans to get it in the main module bank...

 

Julie, still trying to figure out how I can get to Tennessee from Sydney! (yes, I know there are aeroplanes!)

 

Thanks

 

I totally did not know that! So to do it, is this a terribly time-consuming thing? Like do I have to go through and create tags? Yes, the Directory is available for Kindle and from Gutenburg. So if it's merely a formatting thing, maybe it's within reach. It's certainly an interesting option to have...

 

And could I say that y'all just continue to amaze me... These are interesting features, and for all the time I've been spending reading and researching, I didn't even know they existed!

Edited by WomanoftheHouse
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WOTH,

For what it is worth.... if it is more Puritan writings your husband wants to read... you can get pretty much all of it at archive.org for free. It isn't indexed so you can't search it and it won't be tagged so the Bible references are easy to find and so on but it is readable. If Baxter is the crux of it, I'd go with Accordance and put in a request for more of his stuff to be made available for the program. I am not good at this but... I think you might be able to make it usable in Accordance on your own via a user tool or something. There is a site they have with lots of user generated content and I have seen some books on there. Baxter is in the public domain so it could be done. If anyone knows more of how this process works... holler.

Edit:

Either I am blind or the last posts were not there when I started typing this.... but the texts are available at archive.org

Edited by arcanemuse
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You're never getting rid of me, hehe! Ok, Julie, I have another question for you, if you're still reading this. I'm reading about the greek diagramming features in Accordance (and Logos), and I'm seeing there are different methods of diagramming greek. I've done trees, etc. for *english* but not for greek. I think I may start teaching my daughter greek next year for high school. (It's just one of the options I'm floating.) So I'm curious what diagramming methods you can do in Accordance and how those compare to what you were taught in your greek classes. I've seen mention of Kellogg-Reed diagrams, trees, something arc, blah blah. And if you've tried them in Accordance, how comfortable do you find the process?

 

I'm fascinated by the idea that if I get Accordance I can use it so many ways with my high schooler as well. I think the interlinear (click to learn!), the Zondervan Illustrated Backgrounds, there are a number of things here that could carry down to younger students.

Edited by WomanoftheHouse
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I'm back! I'm watching a video, a bit old but interesting, with Dr. J explaining the Accordance philosophy. What he's explaining was what I was sensing, so it's interesting to hear it fleshed out. He's talking about the quality vs. quantity thing, and he has a screen shot at 6:29 into the video with a number of works shown. In that shot there's the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia series. That seems like it ought to be interesting, but I can't find it on the site. Is that still around? Has it been replaced by something else?

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Ok friends, I finally got the demo up and running, and I'm crazy in love! I don't know what I was so worried about! LOL It does everything I thought the software ought to do, and it's so tidy and straightforward about how it does it. Love, love. So when you use the Amplify button and it returns things with tabs, there are sometimes multiple hits within that resource. How do I move to the next hit? Couldn't figure that out. But I love that I just had everything I was expecting/hoping to get so OBVIOUS and intuitive to find that it was just right there. Very happy. See, in reality, I'm the one that's going to be helping the hubby use this. When I'm happy, he's happy. :)

 

I think one of those training seminars is in my future.

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Btw, on this demo it keeps popping up

 

"The text ESVS is not currently available to Accordance."

 

I have no clue what that means, but it's popping up like popcorn on my screen.

 

Ok, now a simple question. If you open a number of Workspaces and then close Accordance, will it come back to the workspaces and have them all there when you re-open? You save your workspaces? Or is it like other mac stuff where it just remembers?

 

I'm back. I found some arrow buttons at the bottom. I assume Art is article? That makes sense. Mk I can't figure out. It doesn't seem to correspond precisely to the hits (the way a Cmd F search would), but it does seem to take me through them visually, nevertheless.

 

I decided to search Melchizedek, since that was something dh was recently searching. I was happy to see it has a spell correct, since some people need that. :) And did you all know Salem was Jerusalem? How could I not have known that? All I had to do was tell it to search all, and up pops all this stuff! So I'm definitely happy. And I love that there's no clutter. This best of the best, quality of quantity approach is right on.

 

Well thanks you all for helping me! I'm excited to be able to show it to him now. I'm fascinated by the more complex things I know are hiding inside it as potential, but even just for the superficial stuff it's a really powerful tool. There are some things I haven't figured out yet, like if he's just in the mood to read Josephus, what workspace or approach is the best for that. Or is that why people keep saying to use Logos as a reader and Accordance for searching? Maybe it works best when you're starting with a Scripture text and *searching* Josephus rather than sitting down to read a section? What happens when you want to research a TOPIC in your resources and so you aren't specifically starting with a Scripture? What workspace or set-up do you use at that point?

Edited by WomanoftheHouse
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Ok, one last thing, and I'll stop bugging you (for tonight, hehe)... http://www.bsreview.org/blog/2012/11/my-thoughts-on-clause-searches-in-logos-5.html/comment-page-1#comment-96777 This article mentions clause searches in Logos, where you can create a search for a subject and a verb. Is there something equivalent in Accordance?

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WOTH,

For what it is worth.... if it is more Puritan writings your husband wants to read... you can get pretty much all of it at archive.org for free. It isn't indexed so you can't search it and it won't be tagged so the Bible references are easy to find and so on but it is readable. If Baxter is the crux of it, I'd go with Accordance and put in a request for more of his stuff to be made available for the program. I am not good at this but... I think you might be able to make it usable in Accordance on your own via a user tool or something. There is a site they have with lots of user generated content and I have seen some books on there. Baxter is in the public domain so it could be done. If anyone knows more of how this process works... holler.

Edit:

Either I am blind or the last posts were not there when I started typing this.... but the texts are available at archive.org

 

Arcane, now that I've played with the demo, I see what you mean. I think Accordance is amazing and powerful, but you're right that it's a study tool connecting resources to the text and overkill if you goal is simply a searchable single resource. So I'm going to talk through the psychology of this with him to see what he had in mind and make sure he has thought through that. I think time sort of swept by him and left him with this huge amount of options that is hard to filter through. All he knows is that right now he's in a mountain of books and post-its every time he tries to read. That's what he's trying to get out of.

 

And btw, are there NOTES or post-its (equivalent) in Accordance? I didn't even think to try that while I was running the demo.

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Hello, WOTH! Let me see what I can do to answer your last 6 posts :)

 

1) For creating user tools, like what Ken was talking about, its extremely easy. Just give Accordance a plain text, or simple HTML file, and it can import it into a tool directly for you - no tagging required. Or you can type in or copy/paste in your information and, again, no tagging required. Accordance will automatically make everything searchable and linkable to the rest of your stuff in your library. Now, the two things you can 'tag' are titles and scripture references. You'll want to tag where the titles are to make a nice Table of Contents (though some html formatting can help do this automatically). You'll also want to tag the scripture references, so Accordance knows where they are (again HTML can help with this). What I'd do is just play around, see what it can import, and you can always edit or import again.

 

2) For the diagramming, I'm not a Greek or diagramming expert, but I know what you can and cannot do. The diagram window is quite powerful and gives you a variety of objects to help build your diagrams. Try it out in your demo - select some text (English, Greek, Hebrew, whatever!) and select 'Diagram' from the Language item on your toolbar, or from the Amplify menu. There you'll see all the items in the palette to add to your diagram.

 

3) The ZPEB was only available as part of the Zondervan Scholarly Suite for Accordance, which has been discontinued due to contracts (I believe). You can still find sellers of the content online, and you can easily add it to any Accordance 9/10. I believe we are also working on updated contracts that allow us to sell the books individually, but for the time being the Scholarly Suite is the only way to get it.

 

4) To cycle through hits within a resource, use the blue arrows at the bottom. The Mk buttons (Mark) are the ones you want, that'll go through each hit in the resource, though you can also navigate by Article (for tools) or Verse, Chapter, Book (for texts). Finally, you can use the tool's gear menu to change 'Show Text As' to just your hit Articles or paragraphs, so you see all the hits right there.

 

5) Thanks for pointing out the ESVS issue! I think this is a demo-specific bug, where some crosslinking is trying to find ESVS, which is part of the Accordance base packages, but not the demo. We'll get this fixed, so thanks!

 

6) Accordance can easily save all of your open workspaces when you quit, just have its Startup set to 'Last Session' in its General Preferences. You can also save individual workspaces, or the entire session, as a file and open it whenever you want.

 

7) Accordance also works perfectly fine as a reader, such as if you want to just read Josephus - just open it from your Library! It has a nice variety of themes to help with legibility, or you could enable reading mode for distraction-free reading. You could also use an auto-scroll, and have it move forward. (all of that is in the gear menu!) So, while Accordance is certainly very powerful for searching, we try to make it easy to use just when you want to sit and read.

 

8) Topic searching has a variety of options, depending on what you want to do. You could start with a Search All of your tools for the topic, or specifically do one of your topical resources, or amplify to a workspace that's set up with a variety of tools that give you exactly what you want for the topic. I'll let others comment more on this one, though.

 

9) What Logos calls clause searches are basically syntactical searches. We have syntaxes of the Greek and Hebrew (no English, sorry!) that enable you to easily search for subjects, verbs, how they relate to each other, etc. You could then compile the results, or just simply see the information as you work. Take a look at Accordance's Syntax Databases if that seems interesting! They are currently being actively developed, so as new books are ready, you'll get them as free updates.

 

10) I think its a good point to consider, what are you looking for? As you say, if all he wants is a resource to read, Accordance may be a bit more than he was looking for. But, if its something where he'd want to study a passage or word that he came across while reading, or any of the other things you've been discovering in Accordance, that changes the picture a bit.

 

11) Accordance lets you comment in 3 ways: You can highlight passages or verses, and customize your highlights to represent and look how you want them to. You can also add user notes to verses, like your post-its I believe. You can also use the user tools I mentioned earlier to keep a more static set of thoughts that aren't tied to a particular passage.

 

I hope this helps! Feel free to keep posting any questions, thoughts, or anything else!

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Thanks Joel, that was exceptionally helpful! Now I have pages and pages of notes to show my dh. Using the demo was pivotal with all this. Now what I'm reading on the forums makes a lot more sense! And yes, I saw that User Tools. I just didn't realize what it was. That would take a long time to get The Directory formated like that, wowsers.

 

Thanks, and I'm sure I'll pop in with more questions. :)

Edited by WomanoftheHouse
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Ken - You and your wife take vacations, right? If you're ever coming to the Southeast US, get in touch with us ahead of time. There is lots to see and do in the area, especially if you like to be outdoors.

 

Julie (and Steve)

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Thanks Joel, that was exceptionally helpful! Now I have pages and pages of notes to show my dh. Using the demo was pivotal with all this. Now what I'm reading on the forums makes a lot more sense! And yes, I saw that User Tools. I just didn't realize what it was. That would take a long time to get The Directory formated like that, wowsers.

 

Thanks, and I'm sure I'll pop in with more questions. :)

Hey WOTH,

glad you are enjoying Accordance, even in its demo form. I have been using it for 20 years and have never regretted the purchase.

 

The making of the directory into a user tool would not necessarily take all that long, but it would unless you knew how to use some automation tools like TextWrangler or BBEdit or vim. If that didn't make any sense to you, it is probably a steep learning curve and perhaps something you might want to attack a little later in your Accordance experience. We may still find some kind soul who might do it and upload it to the Exchange.

Edited by Ken Simpson
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Hey WOTH,

glad you are enjoying Accordance, even in its demo form. I have been using it for 20 years and have never regretted the purchase.

 

The making of the directory into a user tool would not necessarily take all that long, but it would unless you knew how to use some automation tools like TextWrangler or BBEdit or vim. If that didn't make any sense to you, it is probably a steep learning curve and perhaps something you might want to attack a little later in your Accordance experience. We may still find some kind soul who might do it and upload it to the Exchange.

 

Hmm, well I haven't done those things, but I'm always up for some learning. I figure there can't be a more romantic birthday present for a man than a searchable Baxter, right? :) So, no, I haven't used those yet, but maybe I can learn. Thanks for the tips. I'll look into them, and if they're something I can learn, I can see whether it's something I can break into chunks and get done.

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You'll be happy to know we bought our stuff (Accordance) today. I still haven't downloaded it, because I really need to tidy my computer and make some room. Dh is excited. :)

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Welcome to the family :D

Edited by Ken Simpson
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