Some questions about features, space usage

[Chuck Schneider]

Yesterday I completed my second reading of the OT/NT with Accordance!

 

The addition of the daily devotional feature last year was a huge improvement for round two.

 

There have been some things that I noticed along the way that I would like to recommend for improvements, but I'm not completely sure if it's just because of my own ignorance of Accordance software:

 

1) Highlighting - I often find a verse or two that is really important to me and I want to highlight it using my own, simple system. However, I read my daily Bible passages on a variety of devices. The struggle is to somehow retain this highlighting information across the devices.

 

For now, I try to remember which verses were important so that, when I get home, I can highlight them again on my main computer. I've even considered sending myself e-mail to accomplish this. Is there an easier way to ensure that my highlight file is synchronized across devices? I opened up the file with textwrangler in the hopes of coming up with my own merging solution, but the cryptic information that I found there put a quick end to that idea.

 

2) Daily devotional - Each day, I go to the menu and select "default devotional" and a special workspace pops up with the selected passages in canonical order. The special workspace means that none of my tools are tied to the passages as I work my way through them and the order is not the same as what is listed in the devotional.

 

My solution has been to select the list of passages found in my daily devotional, copy the selection and then paste this to my favorite, daily reading workspace (which is looking great thanks to Dr. J's podcasts). This fixes both problems, but having performed this over 300 times, it has become a little tedious (especially because the shading every other day makes it impossible for me to tell if I have actually highlighted and copied all of the references that are listed). Is there a simpler way to do this?

 

3) I love the instant details window and I use it all the time.

 

If I put it over my workspace, with or without fade, I lose sight of content in zones. If I put it on the bottom or the side, I lose lots of screen space. Is there a way to put that in a zone of it's own (maybe together with the resource and highlight palettes?

 

4) Is there a way to sew OT/NT commentaries together so that I can keep the same window open while having the correct OT/NT text following along in my favorite workspace?

 

5) When I create zones, Accordances helpfully tells me the kinds of tools located there (reference, timeline, etc.) but it uses a lot of space to do so.

 

Since I already know what's in each zone, I was wondering if it is possible to turn that off so that I can recover the lost screen space. The same goes for tabs and individual text/tool windows.

 

6) I can't seem to get comfortable with creating/editing user notes, but I love the convenience of having my work available to me on the iPad at church. I haven't tried creating everything outside and then importing it, but maybe that's the answer?

 

7) Importing user Bibles was probably a once in a life-time experience. I hope I don't need to do that again until the feature accommodates a different numbering system.

 

8) This was going to be my comment about wishing iOS had the daily devotional feature, but that has been added already (except that it still displays in canonical order and not the listed order). So let me just say thanks for making it so convenient to read the daily devotional texts on my iPad!

 

Anyway, I'm really enjoying my time with Accordance, regardless of whether there's a more efficient way to use it than what I have practiced so far.

[Joel Brown]

Chuck, very sorry you didn't get a response to this sooner. I can't answer about all of your points, but I'll address the ones I can:

 

1) Highlighting - I often find a verse or two that is really important to me and I want to highlight it using my own, simple system. However, I read my daily Bible passages on a variety of devices. The struggle is to somehow retain this highlighting information across the devices.

 

For now, I try to remember which verses were important so that, when I get home, I can highlight them again on my main computer. I've even considered sending myself e-mail to accomplish this. Is there an easier way to ensure that my highlight file is synchronized across devices? I opened up the file with textwrangler in the hopes of coming up with my own merging solution, but the cryptic information that I found there put a quick end to that idea.

 

This should already be fairly easily possible. AFAIK the highlights files sync between machines in the latest versions of Accordance and iOS App, so as long as both programs use the same highlight files, any highlighting you do on the go will appear on your desktop the next time you sync. Just be sure, when you have highlights you want brought over, to sync device and desktop and you should be good to go.

 

 

2) Daily devotional - Each day, I go to the menu and select "default devotional" and a special workspace pops up with the selected passages in canonical order. The special workspace means that none of my tools are tied to the passages as I work my way through them and the order is not the same as what is listed in the devotional.

 

My solution has been to select the list of passages found in my daily devotional, copy the selection and then paste this to my favorite, daily reading workspace (which is looking great thanks to Dr. J's podcasts). This fixes both problems, but having performed this over 300 times, it has become a little tedious (especially because the shading every other day makes it impossible for me to tell if I have actually highlighted and copied all of the references that are listed). Is there a simpler way to do this?

 

Unfortunately, there isn't a better way right now. However, we have some ideas to make this much more flexible for the user that will hopefully be done soon. (see this thread: Customizing Daily Reading)

 

3) I love the instant details window and I use it all the time.

 

If I put it over my workspace, with or without fade, I lose sight of content in zones. If I put it on the bottom or the side, I lose lots of screen space. Is there a way to put that in a zone of it's own (maybe together with the resource and highlight palettes?

 

We have some exciting plans for the future that should make managing your screen resources much easier and more intuitive, plus more efficient! I can't say much more right now, though! In the meantime, one solution users often have is to set the instant details box to fade, but place it over the entry box. That way, any content it takes up is probably not of high concern when working with the text.

 

4) Is there a way to sew OT/NT commentaries together so that I can keep the same window open while having the correct OT/NT text following along in my favorite workspace?

 

This has been on our list for a long time, and unfortunately keeps getting pushed back as other higher priority features come around. However, you should see something similar to this soon (I hope!).

 

5) When I create zones, Accordances helpfully tells me the kinds of tools located there (reference, timeline, etc.) but it uses a lot of space to do so.

 

Since I already know what's in each zone, I was wondering if it is possible to turn that off so that I can recover the lost screen space. The same goes for tabs and individual text/tool windows.

 

Like I said above, we have some really exciting things in the future for managing your screen space better.

 

6) I can't seem to get comfortable with creating/editing user notes, but I love the convenience of having my work available to me on the iPad at church. I haven't tried creating everything outside and then importing it, but maybe that's the answer?

 

I'm not sure what is feeling uncomfortable about dealing with the user notes. Perhaps you could explain what isn't working as well as you'd like, or what isn't making sense?

 

 

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions!

[Chuck Schneider]

I didn't realize that synchronization could work that way so I gave it a try (for the highlighting).

 

Normally, when I synchronize, I select everything from my iMac. Afterwards, when I synchronized with the MacBook, it told me only my user tools and highlights, but that was okay because I wanted the highlights to be synchronized.

 

My MacBook received the highlights that originated from my iMac, but now, whenever I next try to synchronize my iPad back with my iMac, it gives me an error and fails.

 

I tried a couple permutations (reducing the items to synchronize) and, in the end, all of my library except for a user tool, highlights and the ESVS are gone from my iPad. I'll go ahead and Easy Install to get my library back, but I'm worried about the next time that I want to synchronize highlights and a favorite user tool. There are also a couple of items that won't be available from Easy Install, if I remember correctly.

[Chuck Schneider]

I deleted Accordance on the iPad, reinstalled and the synchronize seems to be working again.