Can we get better word processing in the user tools and verse notes?

[Marco79]

First let me say thank you very much for the hard work you people are doing at Oak Tree Software. You are truly helping to change lives. Thank you very much.

As a person that uses your program to do a lot of writing with scriptural references (links). I have a couple of things that would make using accordance in this way an even more amazing experience. I was wondering if there are any plans to improve the spell checking / word processing of the user tools and user notes. I find it quite time consuming to do the spell checking at the end of a writing session. It would save a lot of time and make writing with accordance more of a blessing to have some improvements here.

My wish list for word processing improvements...

1. Having a running spell checker while you are typing, Some kind of red squiggly line under the misspelled word as is common in other programs. Maybe the option to click on the word and have the options show other possible words. And maybe the option to turn if off as well. The way it is now is difficult for those of us that do a lot of writing.

2. It can be difficult finding your place when you try to edit something in the user tool. Often when I start to edit my user tool I can not find the cursor when the edit page opens up. When you click that first time it opens a window for editing and the cursor can be anywhere on that page.

I was thinking it would be really cool if after the editing window opened up a red circle appeared for two seconds showing you where the cursor is. That would be amazing. Or maybe just have the page move to the top making the curser at the top of the edit page. I'm sure that would be even easier.

3. Maybe an "undo" for the user tool / user notes edit page. An undo button for the edit page would be nice.

4. This last request is not that important. It would be an amazing thing to be able to paste pictures into our writings.

Using Accordance as a research tool is an amazing experience. But a little more support for those of us that like to write and make a lot of notes will make this program even more amazing.

Thank you again.

Marco

[davidmedina]

Amen to that Marco. I think there is a consensus that the Notes and user tools are in need of an overhaul. I too would like to see a more complete writing experience as I prefer to do my notes on the app itself. I would love to have more formatting options and more smart links. I would love to see something like what Logos has with notes but with more formatting tools. And very important, that the iOs app recognize and respect the format created in the desktop app (which does not at this moment).

[Battlesman]

+1

[Unix]

+1 some of this would be nice in Accordance 12 which I want to update to when it comes out.

[John Tadlock]

I agree that better writing tools in Accordance would be very helpful! But I would like to take the request a step further... At least for User Tools I would like to see "authoring tools". By authoring tools I mean that there should be support for developing larger works (book length) that might eventually be published (perhaps to other Accordance users or perhaps to other media including websites).

 

This request has been made before and the response has always been "Accordance is primarily a research tool and not an authoring tool" and "Developing an authoring environment is a larger undertaking than we are capable of taking on." While I understand this response, the problem is that authors need an integrated authoring and research environment. Authors in biblical studies are typically intimately involved with research directly supporting their authoring. Currently, such environments are separate and when authoring a document outside of Accordance you leave behind a lot of powerful help.

 

Recently I made a switch away from Microsoft Word as my primary authoring tool and instead adopted Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com). After using Scrivener a while I have started wondering if it might possible to somehow integrate Accordance and Scrivener if the two companies could work together. Rather than the Accordance team building a new authoring environment from scratch they could leverage a good one that already exists. Scrivener might be interested in providing a generic integration capability that could support researchers wanting to author works in various disciplines using a variety of tools. With Scrivener final publication is generally handled by a different layout tool so a workflow across tools is still needed.

Edited November 11, 2014 by John Tadlock

[RafeAndersen]

I agree with all that was said above. I never use the notes feature in Accordance because it is so time consuming. I can use Microsoft Word with much more ease.

[Abram K-J]

Hi, John,

 

I've been using Scrivener lately, too. Love it. I just copy-paste my Accordance User Notes into Scrivener, and work from there. I like the kind of integration you suggest, but it could be a huge undertaking. And, to push back a bit, Accordance would not be the only research tool an author needs--they may do Web research or need to rely on Kindle or Logos for a certain volume... or a hard copy, heaven forbid!--so presumably, the expectation is already to not have an integrated research-->authoring integration tool, since research is already taking place across multiple media and programs/apps.

 

Scrivener can serve that integrating function, in a sense, especially if you dump all your notes from various sources into it.

This is not to disagree with any of your good ideas--I, too, long for more robust User Notes and User Tool editing capacity in Accordance.

 

In part due to recent sync issues where 11 and the iOS counterpart can't line up, I've started using Evernote for note-taking when researching in Accordance, and find it to be a great option.