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Importing user notes from Online Bible

Started by Lance , Sep 18 2005 05:12 AM

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#1 Lance

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Posted 18 September 2005 - 05:12 AM

Hi all,

I'm in the process of making the permanent switch from OLB to Accordance. My biggest challenge is that I have about 4 years worth of user notes in OLB.

I recall hearing that it would be possible to import these into Accordance as a user tool. What I can't figure out is how to export the notes from OLB. I've tried opening the user notes folder in OLB using the Finder (OSX 10.3.9) and then opening the individual files within that folder with TextEdit.
The first one is "about.dat" - I get a couple of lines of text that just says it's for saving notes.
The second is "notes.dat" - I get a page of garbage text with spaces and line gaps scattered through.
After that there's about 300 individual files with a series of long numbers as filenames. I've tried opening a random selection of those with TE. All the ones I've tried just open up as a blank page with no visible text.

Can anyone help me out?

Edited by Lance, 18 September 2005 - 05:15 AM.

Blessings!
Lance <º))><

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#2 David Lang

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Posted 19 September 2005 - 11:14 AM

Lance,

You need to export your notes from within Online Bible. To do this, open your notes to the very first entry, then choose Export from the file menu. Save the resulting text file to a convenient location. Unfortunately, OLB does not save the formatting information when it exports the notes, so you'll lose any italics, bold, etc.

Accordance will automatically hypertext most Scripture references when you import HTML files, though for some reason we don't do it for import of plain text files. You'll therefore need to change your plain text file to an HTML file by doing the following:

1. append .html to the file name.
2. Open the file in a Text editor such as the free TextWrangler and:
a. Place <HTML> at the beginning of the text.
b. Place a title after the <HTML> tag, like this: <TITLE>My OLB Notes</TITLE>.
c. Show invisible characters and copy the paragraph symbol which appears before each new entry. Paste this into the Find dialog box and replace them all with the html paragraph tag <p>.
3. Save your changes.

Now within Accordance, you can go to File-->User Files-->Import User Tools... and import this html file as a new user tool.

Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
David Lang
Accordance Developer
http://www.accordancebible.com

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#3 Roger

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Posted 22 September 2005 - 08:28 PM

David,

Rather than doing all that, would the same thing be accomplished by opening the text file with a word processor and saving as HTML?

Thanks,
Roger Dye
Viņa del Mar, Chile

#4 David Lang

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Posted 23 September 2005 - 08:42 AM

Good question. Give it a shot and see. I know that Accordance will only let you select files that have a .html or .htm extension, and that it seems to look for the <HTML> tag at the beginning of the file. If saving as html from a word processor accomplishes all that automatically, then theoretically it should work.
Sincerely,
David Lang
Accordance Developer
http://www.accordancebible.com

Author:
Feet to Follow, Eyes to See
http://feettofollow.wordpress.com

Macs in the Ministry
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#5 Lance

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Posted 23 September 2005 - 07:11 PM

Thanks, David & Roger. And sorry if I've appeared to ignore your very helpful & comprehensive advice. I'm just back from a week's country holiday with no connection to cyberspace.

Have now tried out what you suggested. Roger's suggestion worked with MS Word (but not with AWks or TE). Thanks, Roger. I now have the desired user tool with my years of devotional notes. :D Next challenge though: It doesn't look all that tidy or consistent - and I know zip about html and all that. From reading the Acc help notes my head is spinning, but I suppose I'll work it out in due course.

BTW my absolute ideal would have been to import my OLB notes as user notes rather than tools. The OLB notes are largely personal reflections and insights from my devotional scripture reading. But I gather Accordance can only import text as a tool, not a user note. Supplementary question: Having imported it as a tool, is there any non-laborious way of then getting it into user notes? Thanks.

Edited by Helen Brown, 24 September 2005 - 08:17 AM.

Blessings!
Lance <º))><

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#6 Lance

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Posted 23 September 2005 - 10:38 PM

Next exciting episode...

I've tried adding some of those title & subtitle thingys ('T', '1' etc) in the margin in the tool edit window. But when I click the update button, I get an error message "The title at the beginning of an article must use the Geneva font in the User Tool <name>". But Geneva is already the only font used in the entire document - both the tool window and the edit window. So what's going on? Thanks.
Blessings!
Lance <º))><

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#7 David Lang

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Posted 24 September 2005 - 11:36 AM

Lance, I can only guess without actually seeing your user tool, but I suspect that you're trying to make the various Scripture references for each verse note into a title. Since these are already marked as Scripture references, they're being treated as another language/font by Accordance.

Remember that Accordance User Tools, like regular Accordance tools, are divided into different fields. Scripture references are placed into a Scripture field, and Titles are placed into a Titles field. When you try to make a paragraph beginning with a Scripture reference, you're essentially trying to put the same text into two different fields, and Accordance doesn't know what to do with that.

Here's something you might try:

Add Book names and chapter titles to your user tool and make those into title fields. Thus, at the beginning of Genesis, add a title field for Genesis, and then a subtitle for each chapter (option-click in the boundary to place a 1 beside the chapter title). That way, at least you'll have Book and chapter titles in the browser, but the verse references will remain hypertextable Scripture links.

Depending on how adept you are at working with a Text Editor like TextWrangler or BBEdit, you could use search/replace to add the book and chapter titles to your original html file and then re-import the user tool. For example, you could look for "\r(Ge 1\:1)" and replace it with "\r<H1>Genesis</H1>\r\r\1" to add the book title for Genesis (you would need to do this explicitly for all 66 books). Then look for "\r([1-3]?[A-Z][a-z]+ )([0-9]+)(\:1)" and replace it with "\r<H2>Chapter \2</H2>\r\r\1\2\3" to add subtitles for all the chapters. When you import, your browser should be built automatically.

Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
David Lang
Accordance Developer
http://www.accordancebible.com

Author:
Feet to Follow, Eyes to See
http://feettofollow.wordpress.com

Macs in the Ministry
http://www.macsinministrybook.com

Leader of the "Lang Gang"
http://www.langgangland.com
http://twitter.com/DavidAllenLang

#8 Lance

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Posted 24 September 2005 - 09:43 PM

Thanks, David. That sounds pretty comprehensive. I'll get to work on the first bit when I get a chance. I've never used a Text Editor and can't say I'm familiar with the hieroglyphs. But I guess there's always a first time...?
Blessings!
Lance <º))><

MBP late-2011 (10.8.2), iPhone 4, iPad 2
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