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Diagramming Tool


ryangeer

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Periodically I bang this drum - thought it was time to do it once again.... Seriously, though, I do have a few suggestions/tweaks to the tool that would make it much more user friendly... apologies if theses are redundant.

In order of importance (to me at least):

1. The option to keep Hebrew word units together (prefixes and suffixes not separated from root word)

2. The ability to align objects

3. Finer control over size of drop in elements

4. Upgrade the export feature - the resolution is not good right now

5. The ability to link the diagram to its text (ala user notes)

6. A 'free draw' set of tools (right now, if there's some crazy connection that needs to be made its a puzzle game with straight and diagonal lines)

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Just haven't been able to get to a further upgrade of diagramming yet, but it's on the list.

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Totally understand that this is a tool that is probably not broadly used... hopefully this didn't come off as a rant. I have done that in the past - just thought I would offer some positive suggestions for whenever it comes time to upgrade.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I agree with Ryan Geer that having the option to keep Hebrew words together would be nice,

but I would like to stick my two cents in and say that I absolutely love having each element separated into an individual word that can be manipulated, dragged, and placed separately.

I would not want to lose that feature.

Would it make any sense, for the sake of consistency to have the prefixes on prefixing verb forms (yiqtol) and the suffixes on suffixing verb forms (qatal) also separated so that they could be placed in the subject box of the diagram?

 

I would use Ryan's other suggestions as well.

 

What I would like to request is a "smart" feature where if the text selected to be diagrammed is Hebrew,

then the structures (base line, direct object, simple modifiers, etc.) switch their direction automatically without the Option key drag.

I think that if the structure symbols in the symbol palette automatically switched direction and could be dragged that way without the Option key, that would be easier and faster for the user.

 

I attended both sessions in Atlanta (the all-day Friday seminar and the Sunday afternoon syntax seminar) and want to say a big "thank you" to Accordance, David Lang, Helen Brown, Roy Brown, Robert Holmstedt, John Cook, and Martin Abegg. Since the seminars I have been able to become even more productive with Accordance -- immediately because of the seminars. I appreciated the linguistic theory discussions at the Sunday seminar for an explanation of why decisions were made, and I thank you all for trying to make the syntax modules "general" with as little interpretation as possible. I love Accordance! I am amazed at all of its capabilities and the many, many ways it can be customized and individualized for my preferences. This is the greatest program and I would never want to be without it. Thank you so much for your labor of love -- it shows.

 

Mike

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  • 1 year later...

This thread might be dead but 4. & 5. get my vote. I suspect improvements there would encourage greater uptake, and in my case a more integrated workflow. I still diagram in word (Office 2011) - partly because of greater flexibility in exporting and copying stuff and because I tend to diagram larger sections than a clause or two. Be great to have diagrams in a format comparable to User Notes.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Diagramming has been improved in version 10, but there are some improvements yet to be made.

 

Better quality of the export (images are woefully grainy).

A WYSIWYG printing! The words once printed to a PDF (because exporting to an image is unusable, see next grievance) do not align as they did on the screen, a particle will be over a word.

Better sensitivity on word alignment.

 

I agree that a link between the diagram and the verse would be a great feature.

 

Thank you for considering our requests.

 

Benoît

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I agree that some more features would enhance the diagramming component. I for one would like to see it support uses that extend beyond just Reed-Kellogg style diagramming component. Some items would be:

 

1. Generative Syntax Tree Support

2. Source Criticism Analysis (This would mean support to keep words as they appear in the text)

3. Discourse Analysis Support (again, this would mean adding an option to keep sufformatives and such as they appear in the text)

 

As the methods of interpretation populate (e.g., Theological-Literary, Discourse Analysis, Text Linguistics, Form, Redaction, and Source Criticism,), it would be great to have dynamic ways to explore the text. Just my two cents . . .

Edited by James Tucker
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Benoît,

 

I can confirm the words not lining up properly in print, and we'll look into it for the next release. However, I can't reproduce your issue of the export being 'grainy'? When I copy and paste from the diagram window, all of the diagonal lines are exactly as smooth as they look in the window. Can you post an example?

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Hello Joel!

 

Thank you very much for the follow up. I would definitely love to send you the details. The issue is when you go to the "file--> save as picture --> (any of them I imagine although I tried JPEG). Then you get the picture that I am attaching.

 

Also, the print, then save as PDF, also has the issue of replacing the font in the PDF. I use the default Accordance font but the PDF is using another font. I know that we sometimes need to create a PDF and include the special fonts with the file but there is no such option. that option would be great.

 

Thank you very much for your help, it is really appreciated.

 

Benoît

post-17857-0-73553300-1348538017_thumb.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just updated to 10.0.4 and I thought I read that Something about PDF printing and diagramming had been fixed, I think it said "location" which I did not understand. I checked and neither did the PDF WYSIWYG or the export to picture was fixed. I mention this in case the update was supposed to fix one of these things.

 

Thank you!

 

Benoît

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Hello, Benoît, I am sorry I didn't get back to you again before 10.0.4. I'm still failing to see your issues. For the diagram copy, I don't see what is so jagged. The picture you attached looks identical to diagram windows, and involves standard smoothing on all diagonal lines and text. If it is actually different from how your diagram tab looks, could you perhaps post an image of a screenshot of Accordance compared to the exported image?

 

For the PDF, on a variety of test cases, the objects lined up very closely to the original. We did notice a couple of pixels off, which is what was improved in 10.0.4. So, perhaps you could post an example diagram, and post its pdf printout so I can see where the discrepancies are?

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Hi Joel,

 

No worries, I figured you were all busy.

 

OK...

 

So no, my picture looks absolutely nothing like what is on the screen, so I am attaching a screen capture of the random diagram I just did.

 

The PDF has some issues. The words are not spaced as they are on the screen. I also did not try to place the suffixes as close as they normally would, if I do, then the PDF has words on top of each other.

Also, the PDF font is not the same.

 

I hope that helps figuring things out!

 

Thank you for your support, it is greatly appreciated.

 

Benoît

post-17857-0-71338600-1349326291_thumb.png

post-17857-0-85353100-1349326298_thumb.jpg

print-as-PDF-diagram.pdf

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Oh, and I just tried copy and paste, and into Mellel the result is very blotchy as well. Not the same "lack-of-definition" as in the export to JPEG but a smooth-but-poor-definition rendering. See my attachement.

 

Benoît

post-17857-0-32180900-1349327161_thumb.png

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Thanks for the detailed descriptions! I've investigated your problem, and found a few things.

 

1) The grainyness of the JPEG export is because the 'default' compression of the JPEG leaves an awful amount of grain. We'll increase this for the next dot release, but if you want a crisp image export, be sure to use PNG, as that is lossless.

 

2) Pure images such as a copy, screenshot, and picture export are pixel based, not vector. So if you try to make them bigger, they will be fuzzy. I recommend making your text size bigger in the diagram, so they'll look better when copying out, if you need to make them bigger. I still, when copy/pasting or exporting to PNG, don't see a single difference between what the diagram displays and what the export is. Perhaps you are normally displaying your diagram at a zoom level (150%+?), which doesn't apply when exporting?

 

3) When you print to pdf, then it properly maintains them as fonts, not pixels, and you can scale it appropriately. However, based on your PDF it looks like you are exporting to Unicode fonts. This is great for a lot of people, but Lucida Grande rendering Hebrew doesn't look nearly as good as our Yehudit. Plus, it has different sizes, so you get the different horizontal spacing. The words were placed at the same location, but since the unicode is fatter, thats why they overlap a bit. You can either change the font of the PDF using an editor, to a nicer Unicode font, or simply turn off 'Export Greek and Hebrew as Unicode' in Preferences -> Greek and Hebrew. Then it will export using our nice font and look exactly like the diagram, but be scalable.

 

Let me know if this helps.

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Joel,

 

I should mention my computer specs I think so I've attached two screenshots.

 

here is my feedback on your suggestions.

1) I get the same very very bad resolution whether I use PNG of JPEG. The zoom level makes no difference.

 

2) I have not been capturing off the screen. I've been using File--export--JPEG.

 

3) Turning off "export hebrew as Unicode" did the trick. The font looks great and so does the spacing.

 

--------

 

A couple remarks.

 

- When I select Hebrew text in BHS and then click on the icon "Diagram" the text opens in font size 12, not the 27pt that is my default for the BHS. That seems to be an error.

- When resizing the font in the diagram, I had a better result exporting to JPEG (using 30 pt font), but when I selected the text and tried to resize to 72pt font, Accordance gave me the spinning wheel that never ends.

- The font selection in the drop down menu in the diagram tool lists ALL the fonts in my computer, not just those used by Accordance. It is very tedious to remember which ones Accordance uses and find them in that list. Updating that list to show only Accordance Fonts would be great, or show them as a separate list before all the other ones.

 

- There are still issues with the PDF. See "Diag 1" (a screenshot from Accordance), and "Diag 1 PDF" a screenshot of a PDF. And "PDF1.pdf" the actual PDF.

Notice the "nun" after "Mi" it is not in Accordance and shows up in the PDF.

 

- Also when resizing the text of the diagram the spacing between words/particle/etc is not enlarged, so if I want to make the font bigger I have to select the whole sentence and make it a group then change the font then ungroup it. Would it not be possible to change the spacing of ungrouped items if they are selected and the font is changed.

 

- Also when changing the font size from one to another then to another the check mark in the menu by the actual font size remains, so that there is a check mark by the 12pt, 27pt and 30pt AT THE SAME TIME!

 

- The font size in Diagram does not change every time I select a new font.

 

 

----------------------

 

OK, that's quite enough for one post.

 

The good news is that Print to PDF is workable although there is that floating "nun" there. I'll be diagramming for a while so I am bound to test this out some more.

 

Thank you for the support.

 

Benoît

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post-17857-0-31264500-1349549645_thumb.png

post-17857-0-63131900-1349549652_thumb.png

PDF1.pdf

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Alright, we'll keep working through this! First, let me clarify a couple of points.

 

1) Anytime you do anything that isn't vector based (i.e. not a pdf), if you try to scale it up it will be a poor resolution. So, any export option, JPEG or PNG, will still look poor when scaled up, and I believe this is the primary issue you keep dealing with. Perhaps where you are importing it into is already scaling it up, so you don't realize that this is where the blurry text is coming from. Your solutions are to export larger fonts or use PDF, as we've already discussed, and I'll discuss a bit more below.

 

2) For clarification, the PNG vs JPEG issues are more about other graphical artifacts that were occurring around the text when exporting to JPEG, because of a low compression quality. At first I thought this was what you were referring to.

 

Alright, on to your actual issues/notes:

 

1) The initial diagram size is separate from the text display size. To set a larger default, within the diagram display options, increase the Font Size popup and click 'Save as Default'. So, if you select '72' and save it as the default, all diagrams created from that text will default to 72 pt text when being created.

2) I haven't yet been able to reproduce the spinning wheel when trying to resize the text, so can you give me more details for what was selected when it froze? Has this occurred again for you?

3) Correct, currently the Diagram lists all fonts on your computer, not just the Accordance ones. We've had other requests to expand the preference 'Use default fonts in font menu' to apply to more than just User Notes and Tools, namely the Diagram and Word Chart, so we'll look into this.

4) It would be something new to have the spacing between text elements change when their fonts are all changed, but we'll look into its feasibility.

5) It is definitely a bug that the check marks don't properly update when changing font sizes, so we'll definitely look into fixing that ASAP.

6) I'm not sure what you mean in that the font size doesn't change when you select a new font?

7) For the floating 'nun', I wonder where that letter came from? Does this reproduce every time you use a 'nun', or is a nun even in the text at that point? Perhaps it was hidden in the diagram due to being wrapped to a second line?

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Thanks Joel for all your help.

 

About 2) The spinning ball happened once, when I had selected the entire hebrew text already in the diagram window and had selected font 72 points. I think it had some issue displaying the text with that big of a font. I just tried it and it worked fine.

 

About 6) when the font size window was up I could click on one font size and the text in the background would not change.

 

7) the nun was not part of the original word. I know what you mean about it having been hidden behind some other text or having been from another word, but I don't think that is what happened there. I could have made a mistake of course but the "nun" on the PDF did not appear as a properly sized "nun" so I think that is evidence for a bug rather than an error on my part.

 

Again, thank you very much for your help.

 

Benoît

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  • 5 years later...

I am using Accordance 12.2.4. The graininess problem when exporting diagrams persists. I have a gnarly diagram that is too large to fit on one page in the diagram tool, at 12pt font size. I want to export as an image so I can include it in my paper (due in 2 days -- yes, I am a procrastinator). If I print, the text is nice and clear but it spans multiple pages so I can't insert it into my paper. The solution is to export as an image. Whether I export as PNG or JPG, it is grainy. I do not think this is a compression issue but rather a resolution one. Both are at only 72 dpi. That was reasonable for screen viewing back in 2010 when this thread started. It was not, however, reasonable for printing which requires at least 300 dpi for crisp text. Now, in 2018, 72 dpi is also inadequate for screen viewing. When I enlarge either image file on my screen, all vertical and horizontal lines are nice and crisp. Diagonals and text are fuzzy. My only option at this point is to redo the entire diagram with 48 pt letters and shrink the exported image down to 12pt to achieve ~300 dpi or use what I have and hope my professor has good eyesight. In the interest of time I will probably choose the latter, but professors and students everywhere would rejoice if the option to export at 300dpi were added.

 

I also want to register my vote for #2 (ability to align objects) and #6 (a free-draw tool). Eight years later, I am still playing the puzzle game. 

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  • 2 months later...

One workaround for problem of low resolution images when diagrams that span multiple pages are exported as PNG or JPG is the following. Instead of a page size of US Letter, choose one so that the entire diagram fits on one page. Then you can save as PDF and have a higher resolution version that is all in one image to play with.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Yes!  +1

 

With the passing away of BibleWorks, perhaps Accordance will be able to buy the rights to their awesome diagramming tool.?   :D

 

I would appreciate all of the original poster's improvements and especially (#2, above) that objects and words would snap together to stay aligned, and (#5, above) that the saved diagrams would be linked to the Bible text.

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