User notes revamp

[Ken Han]

In another thread Joel mentioned plans / hopes for user notes revamp, which is something I look forward to very much. I'm going to make some comments / requests in this thread since I know the developers read the forum posts. I'm going to assume that user notes and user tool edit functions share at least some code, and so make some comments that reply more or less to user notes / tool edit without distinguishing them too sharply.

 

1. Smarter scripture hyperlinks. In user notes context, let's say I'm editing user notes in Rom 2:1. I can enter Matt 1:1 and cmd-L to hypertext. In addition to this, I'd love to simply do something like

 

"sr:v.3" where Accordance sees the sr: (sr = scripture reference, or whatever) prefix and automatically hypertext v.3 upon close/save with inherited context info. In this case v.3 will receive link to Rom 2:3, since I'm editing user note for Rom 2:1. So it inherits book and chapter contexts.

 

Similarly, while editing user note in Rom 2:1, sr:5:1 could automatically link to Rom 5:1, in this case just inheriting the book context. Perhaps in user tool context there can be a way to assign default hyperlink value per document. So if I'm creating/editing a user tool that is significantly tied to, e.g. 1 John, then I can set 1 John as the default context, and all sr:3:1 and such can receive automatic links. This is the convention used in most commentaries. And if I copy-pasted from a commentary, upon save all context-dependent references in the quoted passage will receive automatic links.

 

2. In user note context, a way to expand the scope of find/replace beyond single verse. So an option to do find/replace in a single verse (current method), plus, find/replace at chapter, book, or even the whole note file level.

 

3. Live spell check like standard OS X (Windows?) apps.

 

4. Separate content from presentation the way html handles structure/content and css handles style. After years of using Accordance, my notes and user tools are jumbled messes of different fonts, sizes, colors, etc. I'd love to define one "stylesheet" to change all my English / Greek / Hebrew font face, size, color, and etc. If this cannot be done with already existing notes, then I'd love an option to do this with new notes or tools I create. Perhaps use Multimarkdown? I think this will have the added benefit that whatever formatting created on the desktop will not be lost upon edit on iOS devices by having separate style sheets to apply on desktop and iOS. It's really unfortunate that all the work that went into formatting the notes is lost simply by opening it in iOS.

 

5. Currently, the only way I know how to clean up my user tool from the formatting mess is to export the whole file to an external app, clean it up, and then reimport it. But doing this loses all structure info like T, 1, 2, etc. Perhaps this is another area that can be helped by separating content from presentation, and let Accordance export it out using Multimarkdown, for example. This would make it so much simpler to move content in and out of Accordance.

 

6. Increase the width of the heading tagging margin of user tools edit window. On a smaller screen it's not very easy to use.

Edited July 26, 2013 by Ken Han

[Randy Steffens Jr]

Very very good ideas. I would love to see each of these implemented as well. And great idea about incorporating markdown.

 

Randy