Combined texts option

[Rod Decker]

It would save a lot of screen real estate if it were possible to link two non-overlapping texts for display in a single pane. The best example of this would be the LXX and GNT texts. If I were doing a search in an English version, a single adjacent pane would show LXX with the OT hits and GNT with NT hits. This would also enable a single search to include both LXX & GNT. A single default set would work, though many might want to be able to specify which NT Greek text was used. BibleWorks has such linked texts and it makes some things very handy.

 

(Now someone can tell me how this already works! )

[Joe Weaks]

Rod,

This option was discussed at length a year ago. See the topic here.

[Rod Decker]

Rod,

This option was discussed at length a year ago. See the topic here.

 

Thanks for that link, Joe. It was an interesting discussion of which I was unaware. Most of the relevant points were noted, but two things deserve comment.

 

1. Not noted at all in that discussion (at least explicitly) is the issue of screen real-estate. Some may run 30" monitors, but most of us find this to be a major issue. Being able to save one full pane in a window would be a tremendous help. That is, instead of, say: ESV, GNT, LXX, I could instead have only 2 panes (ESV & LXX/GNT), I would increase my space by 1/3.

 

2. Perhaps implied in the earlier discussion (I think you mentioned it in passing), is that both LXX and GNT are Hellenistic, koine Greek. As such it is exceedingly important to those of us who work primarily with the language (grammar, syntax, etc.) to be able to do a single search that covers two of the largest corpora of that language--and the two largest related texts at that. (I.e., Josephus and Philo, though large, do not have the relationship the LXX and NT do. There are, of course, other works in koine also.)

 

For other texts, the search all or other similar linked commands are satisfactory since one typically isn't trying to read them in parallel columns.

 

There were some serious misunderstandings on other matters touched by some, but they aren't relevant to my (not new) feature request. So let me just reiterate the desirability of such a feature to the Accordance team--and hope that the last year may have seen some development along that line. If not, at least it's been put on the table again.

 

Thanks.

[Ruben Gomez]

There were some serious misunderstandings on other matters touched by some, but they aren't relevant to my (not new) feature request. So let me just reiterate the desirability of such a feature to the Accordance team--and hope that the last year may have seen some development along that line. If not, at least it's been put on the table again.

 

Thanks.

 

Rod,

 

For what is worth, I have always thought that a combined LXX-GNT module (grammatically tagged, of course) is a real must. I agree with you, and sincerely hope that such a "feature" will be considered sooner rather than later

[davesalyer]

Rod,

Thanks for bringing this back up. I remember seeing the original thread but hadn't followed it. You're right, it got off topic quite a bit. The point of this feature request is not to make unwarranted assumptions about the unity of LXX and GNT, or the "bible" of the early church, etc. The point is purely screen economy and ease of use. I too like to have one panel for English translation and one for original languages and it is annoying to either switch every time I change testaments or to have three panels open and one be empty and wasting screen real estate (for us laptop users). It seems that this would have to be some sort of user customizable feature rather than a new module since different people want different original language texts at different times. I think Robb had some good ideas about that in the other thread. The tagged English texts (ESVS, NAS95S, etc.) can be helpful here but you can't see the original syntax and context without having that original language text out. So I second the motion.

[Helen Brown]

OK, we have an idea how we might do this without very complex programming. We'll try to get to it soon.

[Rod Decker]

That is very good news! Thanks. And we'll try not to pester you to define "soon"--at least until next month!