Intelligent Search

[R Gustason]

How hard would it be to get rid of the words and verse radio buttons and make an intelligent search feature that would recognize the difference between a verse search and a key word search?

[R. Mansfield]

I've thought about this before, too, but I could also foresee problems--mainly in dealing with words that are also the names of books of the Bible (or their abbreviations).

 

For instance, if I typed the word mat, how would Accordance distinguish between displaying the Gospel of Matthew and a search for every occurrence of the word?

[R Gustason]

I've thought about this before, too, but I could also foresee problems--mainly in dealing with words that are also the names of books of the Bible (or their abbreviations).

 

For instance, if I typed the word mat, how would Accordance distinguish between displaying the Gospel of Matthew and a search for every occurrence of the word?

 

They could return all results. All of Matthew followed by all instances of the word mat, perhaps with the ability to filter results in the options dialog.

 

I just really dislike the popup I get when searching for a word only to find out i was in the verse search part of the program. Trivial perhaps, but annoying none-the-less.

[jpkang]

I've wondered about this before, too, but as I see it, the problems it causes are not worth the hassle. Perhaps Accordance could be set to automatically run a verse search if the proposed entry is legal and you were in word mode (but less certain that the reverse should behave this way for the reason Rick gives), but that also introduces a potentially undesirable interface inconsistency.

 

Also: parsing is hard.

[Joe Weaks]

Also: parsing is hard.

Just ask Siri.

[rdtaylorjr]

I'm extremely pleased with it the way it is. I recently switched from Bibleworks, and it doesn't ever say, "It looks like you entered a word. Would you like to do a word search?" With Accordance's method, once simple click and you're on your way. With Bibleworks, it gives you a pop-up that says "Sorry, what you entered is incorrect. Please start over. By the way, would you like to see some examples of how to do it correctly?" (I'm paraphrasing, of course). But, after you click to dismiss the pop-up, you have to completely re-enter your entire search argument. Talk about a hassle.

 

So, like I said before, I'm really happy with the way Accordance does it. I'm not sure I'd want to have two different sections of results (like the way BibleGateway.com does it). That would just clutter up my results. For those times when I happen to do it wrong (enter a word when it is set to Verses), your suggestion would definitely be handy, but the majority of the time I do enter it correctly (enter a word when it is set to Words), and in those instances, I would end up getting a bunch of verse results I don't want.

 

I think one extra click when I happen to do it wrong is a really good compromise.

[R Gustason]

I like the way google does it ... gives you everything available from all sources.

[rdtaylorjr]

I actually suggested the very same thing on the Bibleworks forums a year or two ago. The problem with the Google model in this case is that sometimes, maybe even all of the time, I want my search results in Accordance to be limited. I may want to know exactly how many times a word occurs in a certain form in the Old Testament. If there are verse results thrown in there too, my numbers will be off. I could sort through the results and manually determine which ones are what I need and which ones aren't, but that ends up being much more of a hassle than a single click would be. With Google, there is no need limit your results. I don't ever need to know how many different websites contain a certain word. I just need to get to the one or two websites that have relevant information about the words in my search. As long as the most relevant results are at the top, Google can return 3.7 million hits and that's okay.

 

Obviously, I may be wrong; this is just my initial reaction to the idea. Maybe there's a way to do it gracefully and accurately. In the meantime, I'll just be happy with the fact that I switched to Accordance.

[Anon]

It would be rather difficult, as J.P. and Rick have adumbrated above. One particular example would be the hyphen. The hyphen is treated differently by each respective search criteria (i.e., whether it's used in the "Words" or "Verses"). In the Verses option, Accordance interprets the hyphen as a range marker. In the Words option, it can mean range ?(a-z) or negate. Things would get rather messy if these two were conflated (and create a larger hassle for the end user).

As a tip: the keyboard shortcut option to toggle between Words/Verses is ⌘;

[danzac]

I agree, it wold be good. Isn't some of the "smarts" already there? It recognizes when I do a word search that doesn't match a biblical book.

[Boris Repschinski]

I'm extremely pleased with it the way it is.

 

 

Same here - the issue is, I think whether one likes to have as many search results offered as possible, or whether one wishes to define the search accurately in order to prevent having to wade through unwanted search results. I think the keyboard shortcut to switch between verse and word searches is a nice compromise.

 

With regard to Google-like searches: Isn't "Search All" doing that for you?

[R Gustason]

With regard to Google-like searches: Isn't "Search All" doing that for you?

Yes! Exactly! Have the search all be integrated within the search bar at the top of the workspace and let it be intelligent enough to know when I type in Matt 1-7 to show verses as opposed to mat which would show a dialog box similar to search all allowing me to click on verses containing the word mat, the gospel of Matthew, or books in my library with 'mat' in them. The functions seem to be already available in accordance, how else would it give the pop up saying door is not a recognized book of the bible? It had to recognize the improper use of the search.

 

 

So I guess what I'm saying is have the search be a universal search right at the top of the screen, without the need to toggle between the two, and scanning through the entire library just as the New>Search All function does.

[Daniel Wee]

I actually like the way Bibleworks handles the searches although it may not be as flexible as Accordance's approach. In BW, if I prefix a search with a dot (eg: ".mat and") it will search for "mat <and> and" but if I prefix it with an apostrophe, it will search for "mat and". If I do not prefix it with either, it searches for the book. This is rather intuitive and faster than clicking on the buttons.

 

Daniel