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Best way to compile information while studying?


William Cross

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I recently noticed a friends copy of Logos and how as he studies if he finds a portion of an article he would like to cite or refer back to he can copy it and paste it into a Logos study notes file very quickly as well as thoughts that occur to him as he studies. When he is finished in Logos he can export that to a Word doc to begin writing out his sermon and he also still has that file in Logos to refer back to in reference to the portion of scripture he was working on. Is there a good way to do this in Accordance?

Thanks

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If you are just collecting Bible verses and want to see them in different translations, you can add the verses to a Reference list window, and save the window.

 

However, I think the User Tool feature is ideal for your purposes. Simply copy and paste (or drag) any text into its Edit window and click Update to save this to the tool. You first need to create a blank User Tool for this purpose. It's also easy to export from the tool, with copy and paste, drag and drop, or save as an RTF file.

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I recently noticed a friends copy of Logos and how as he studies if he finds a portion of an article he would like to cite or refer back to he can copy it and paste it into a Logos study notes file very quickly as well as thoughts that occur to him as he studies. When he is finished in Logos he can export that to a Word doc to begin writing out his sermon and he also still has that file in Logos to refer back to in reference to the portion of scripture he was working on. Is there a good way to do this in Accordance? Thanks
PC Study Bible has this feature as well. It makes use of 'appending' to the clipboard after which, when everything is compiled, you can paste to your favorite word processor for arranging.I'll be interested to see if Accordance has this available as well. Or maybe something on the horizon.
If you are just collecting Bible verses and want to see them in different translations, you can add the verses to a Reference list window, and save the window.However, I think the User Tool feature is ideal for your purposes. Simply copy and paste (or drag) any text into its Edit window and click Update to save this to the tool. You first need to create a blank User Tool for this purpose. It's also easy to export from the tool, with copy and paste, drag and drop, or save as an RTF file.
Interesting solution Helen. I think that may fit the bill just perfectly.
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If you are just collecting Bible verses and want to see them in different translations, you can add the verses to a Reference list window, and save the window.

 

However, I think the User Tool feature is ideal for your purposes. Simply copy and paste (or drag) any text into its Edit window and click Update to save this to the tool. You first need to create a blank User Tool for this purpose. It's also easy to export from the tool, with copy and paste, drag and drop, or save as an RTF file.

 

Would a User Tool or User Note be better for this purpose? How do others do this or do others do this?

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Would a User Tool or User Note be better for this purpose? How do others do this or do others do this?

 

It depends on what kind of notes you are taking. User Notes are tied to particular Bible verses. They are excellent for notes onn that particular verse, but not so good for notes on a larger pericope or a particular theme.

 

I use a User Tool for my weekly sermon preparation. I follow the Revised Common Lectionary, so I have one tool for each of the three lectionary years, but you could have one tool per theme, season, or Biblical book if you wanted.

 

I actually have a preset structure I use in my user tool. At the end of the User Tool is an "generic" outline that I use as a framework for my Notes. It looks like this:

 

Proper Name & Number

.Readings

.Old Testament Lesson

..Intertextuality

..Context

..The Pericope

....Hebrew Words and Phrases

..Illustrations/Application/Hermeneutical Arch

.Gospel Lesson

.Epistle Lesson

.External Links

 

The periods are just so you can see the different heading levels. Each heading has it own style. The OT section has the subheadings because I've been preaching from the prophets the last few months. But I can easily copy those sections and paste them under "Gospel" or "Epistle" if I were working on those.

 

Each week I copy this "template" and paste it right after my notes from the week before. I mark the title headings, and begin to save my notes. I copy in notes from various Accordance modules, resources I find on the internet or in print, the results of searches I run in Accordance, and my own thoughts on the matter.

 

Lorinda

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Could others out there share how you use Accordance in compiling and storing information as you study? User Notes or User Tools?

 

Thanks

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I recently noticed a friends copy of Logos and how as he studies if he finds a portion of an article he would like to cite or refer back to he can copy it and paste it into a Logos study notes file very quickly as well as thoughts that occur to him as he studies. When he is finished in Logos he can export that to a Word doc to begin writing out his sermon and he also still has that file in Logos to refer back to in reference to the portion of scripture he was working on. Is there a good way to do this in Accordance?

Thanks

 

William

 

I use both Logos and Accordance, but I usually take notes in a word processor. I note that the notes feature receives more complaints on the Logos news groups than almost any other feature of the application. If your friend can put that feature to good use he is definitely an exception!

 

I believe the Accordance User Notes and User Tools are a superior implementation, and one of those should fit your need.

 

Jack

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My favorite way of collecting notes as I study is with plain ole text in a text file. I have a universal key combo trigger that grabs what I've highlighted (doesn't matter whatever application I'm in) and it places the text at the bottom of my text document, which doesn't even need to be open in any application. This allows me to focus on what I'm doing, and let the capture take care of itself, and then reserve the arrangement of it for when I'm focusing on that document.

The function also can bring up a text box and allow me to append a quick note to the bottom of the file.

I do all this using Quicksilver.

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Could others out there share how you use Accordance in compiling and storing information as you study? User Notes or User Tools?

 

Thanks

 

I use DEVONthink by highlighting, dragging and dropping the information to the icon in the doc.

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....... Is there a good way to do this in Accordance?

Thanks

I compile info during study using a "best of breed" philosophy. I use multiple applications to gather, assimilate, synthesize, and present. Many tools are used during the process. Why would I limit myself to one way ? Depending upon the study genre, the tool might need to change. There are so many great inspired applications, why not ? Use an outliner, a mind mapper, a database, a drawing tool, or presentation tool, and not just one of each. The focus changes from time to time. Do I use Accordance User Notes ? No, not too much, mostly reading notes minutiae. Accordance Reference Lists are great interim containers for the study process. I find myself taking screen shots of Accordance screens frequently for inclusion later. One of my important tools is FoxTrot since it searches quantities of many kinds of files better than Spotlight. Many of my studies from Accordance are saved as pdf's. The last thing I ever want to see is a version of "Accordance Office," an all-in-one bloated titanic.

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I compile info during study using a "best of breed" philosophy. I use multiple applications to gather, assimilate, synthesize, and present. Many tools are used during the process... The last thing I ever want to see is a version of "Accordance Office," an all-in-one bloated titanic.

Great comments that I echo. There's so little difference between having two windows of the same app open and having two windows from two different apps open, I would suggest using the best app for each functional window.

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My favorite way of collecting notes as I study is with plain ole text in a text file. I have a universal key combo trigger that grabs what I've highlighted (doesn't matter whatever application I'm in) and it places the text at the bottom of my text document, which doesn't even need to be open in any application. This allows me to focus on what I'm doing, and let the capture take care of itself, and then reserve the arrangement of it for when I'm focusing on that document.

The function also can bring up a text box and allow me to append a quick note to the bottom of the file.

I do all this using Quicksilver.

 

 

I use Quicksilver for opening applications with triggers. How do you set this up?

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I use Quicksilver for opening applications with triggers. How do you set this up?

This workflow makes it instant to collect text into a file, so is well worth it. In Quicksilver, enable "Proxy Objects" which gives you access to a "Current selection" action. This pulls the text highlighted in the current application.

Aso, enable the plug-in "Text manipulations" which gives you access to a "Append to..." action. This action places the text at the end of a text file you designate, without ever having to open it.

Then, create a new trigger that gets "Current selectin", "Appends to..", and then name a text file you've designated as the holding tank for all your notes. I keep a text file called "swap.txt" in my home folder as my catch all. Here's a screenshot of the trigger:

post-16-1192306335_thumb.png

I assign this trigger a universal key combo and wherever I am (Accordance, safari, email, pdf's), I highlight text and instantly send it to my notes text file. (The grab selection function won't work with some applications, such as Word and Firefox. For those, you have can have a second trigger that copies to clipboard and then appends.)

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  • 1 month later...

Joe,

Hopefully you or someone else can help me. I can't for the life of me get this to work. I've tried several times. No matter if the 'text' file is open or not, when I highlight text (I was highlighting text in Safari here in this thread), hit my key sequence, nothing happens. And nothing is appended to the file.

 

Any ideas?

 

Edit: I'm only getting a value of (null) as shown in pic 2 that grows each time I hit the key sequence.

 

It does the same thing no matter what app I'm in. Its not copying text for some reason.

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Tom,

 

First, you should test the "Command Window with Selection" trigger.

In QS preferences, Go to Triggers/Quicksilver and look at the "Command Window with Selection". Make sure it is checked and assign it a key command for testing purposes. I use "⌃⌥ c", control option c.

To test:

Go to Safari.

Highlight some text.

Invoke with this trigger (⌃⌥ c or whatever).

Did it grab your text?

 

Secondly, I'd want to make sure Append to... is working correctly on your machine, before making it into a trigger.

 

Invoke QS.

Press the Period to change it to text entry.

Type some text.

Hit Tab.

Type "Append" to bring up the Append action.

Hit Tab

Type "Swap" to bring up the Swap text file.

Press return.

Open up the Swap file to test.

 

Give me a report on these.

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Joe,

 

Thanks for helping..

Okay, I tried both tests and here are the results.

 

Test 1 - I set up the Command Window with Selection as you said with the key combo of ctrl opt c. I highlighted some text in Safari and hit the key combo. When I do that, QS pops up the 'entry' box as shown in the picture attached. Nothing is captured as far as I can tell. Even if I try to Cmd V, it isn't the text I've highlighted.

 

Test 2 - This one worked fine. I followed your instructions and the text that I typed into the entry box was appended to the swap file.

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Joe,

 

I can not find how to get "Current Selection -> Proxy Object" into the first box for the trigger. What am I missing? OR the third box "swap.txt"

 

Edit: Now I am having trouble with just the third box.

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I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but "The Apple Blog" has a podcast on iTunes that has at least 9 podcasts that deal with Quicksilver. I am currently downloading them, so I can not say how well they are put together. You can either search for "The Apple Blog" in the iTunes Store or click here and follow the "via iTunes" link and it will take you right to it in iTunes.

 

Hope this helps.

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Joe,

 

OR the third box "swap.txt"

 

Justin,

Create a file called swap.txt and place it in your Home folder or in your documents. I've placed it in both, it doesn't matter. Then, in Quicksilver preferences, setup the trigger under Trigger -> Custom Triggers. The third box, type swap and it should find the file for you. At least mine does.

 

Something is wrong with mine still as it still will not copy anything. I've tested the Append to feature with Joe's help but he seems to be busy at the time and I've not heard back from him in a couple of days. It simply will not copy the text although mine is setup exactly like his. At least, as far as the information he has given me. I'm still open for suggestions as I really want to get this working.

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Update:

I'm not sure what happened... I uninstalled Quicksilver and reinstalled it. For whatever reason, after setting everything up the exact same way, it is now working perfectly.

 

Thanks to Joe who spent some of his precious time trying to help me.

 

I was even able to setup a two keystroke combo to copy as citation... VERY cool.

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Sorry I was gone a day, guys... weather here brought extra time at the church.

Tom, I had concluded things were just wrong with preferences or something with your QS install, so was going to recommend uninstalling and starting from scratch--but I see you were a step ahead of me.

Justin, glad you found the Apple Blog vidcasts... they are very helpful, I think.

 

I've just written a new Quicksilver action that some folks will find especially tasty.

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Is there a reason you use a text file as opposed to one that excepts unicode? I think that going into a program like Pages might make things go even faster, unless the fonts do not carry over.

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Is there a reason you use a text file as opposed to one that excepts unicode? I think that going into a program like Pages might make things go even faster, unless the fonts do not carry over.

Justin, Two things.

 

First, I use a text file called "swap.txt" for reasons that some geeks will know...but you can use a text file with a name suitable to what you're doing. "My notes" "Collective ideas" "Daily journal" You can have several text files going for quick adding to.

 

Secondly, the quick "Append to" function is just a non-interface way of collecting stuff into a file you don't even have to have open. You can easily have an action that pastes stuff in TextEdit (or anything). This can be done to preserve font and style information in most cases (Unicode IS plain text and can be put into the previous method). But remember that this would require the document to be open, or to have it opened if it's not already. Such an action would simply grab the the highlighted text in Accordance and paste it into TextEdit. (I have used something like this often in the past.)

I can provide such a thing if you can not find it otherwise.

 

Joe

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I've just written a new Quicksilver action that some folks will find especially tasty.

 

Hey Joe. No problems. I figured you were busy. Wanna tell us about that action?

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