3 replies to this topic

[Vandymarc]

I really like the direction and focus that Accordance has been on. It puts them as a leader in building their resource tools for in-depth study. I would not like them to get away from this because I am afraid other companies would inevitably catch up (may take a while, but this is what sets Accordance apart from the others).

That being said, I do appreciate the focus recently as well. As said by Ms. Helen Brown (God bless you),

"We are committed to overhauling the User Notes and User Tools features soon, but we have to give priority to some other upgrades. We do appreciate the feedback, and we take it to heart (perhaps too much so). We just cannot do everything at once."

The focus of this post would be to get feedback from those of you "for" the recent highlighting fixation mania. With the ability to note and change color of text, as well as create tools from the tool menu I would like to have some reasons/reflections on why highlighting is so important to focus on, and/or, how could it be used so much more than some of our other tools available, thus enabling it as being so important? I personally think it could be used, but I don't see it as a focus more so than finding new ways to do what we already can to lead the way in biblical study tools. Thanks for your input...

Edited by Vandymarc, 29 March 2012 - 09:45 AM.

[Timothy Jenney]

Good question!

As I consider Accordance, I have noticed that it has all the tools any professional could ever want to study the Bible. However, I think we could do better at some of the tools used by people just starting to study the Bible. One example is highlighting, which is used extensively in Inductive Bible Study. I like the way that these folks are committed to let nothing stand between them and the study of the text (researching the primary source [the Bible] vs. the secondary sources [commentaries and the like]). This perspective is very similar to Accordance's "the Bible is central" principle, first espoused by David Lang.

That said, I do have reason to believe you'll also see some modest improvements to User Notes and User Tools this year. However, it has never been our intention to add a full word processing program. We envision people using Accordance in conjunction with Word, Pages, Mellel and the like for writing, Powerpoint and Keynote for presentations. Yes, Accordance does have a modest word processor and slide show mode included, but we have felt our resources would be best invested in our core functions: biblical study.

[mikes]

I think I got the message:

• Don't actually plan on substantial updates to user created content... ever.
• Focus on with studying the text in Accordance and keep substantive notes and study elsewhere.

Pretty much sums it up, no?

[Helen Brown]

No, we will upgrade the user created content features. I hope we'll get to them this year, but it's not what the developers are currently working on. Except that we are adding the ability to import Unicode Bibles, in the next update of Accordance.