In this series of posts, I’ve been talking about how the newest version of Accordance takes features like the Library and triple-clicking and ”turns them up to 11”. In today’s post, I want to focus on how commentaries now “go to 11.” I also want to offer some tips for how to organize your commentaries to get that “extra push over the cliff.”
Accordance has long enabled you to view commentaries in parallel panes that scroll alongside the Bible, or to open them in separate tool tabs to browse and search them. Unfortunately, short of doing a global search for a verse reference, there was no way to tell which commentaries actually included a comment on your passage of study. You therefore always ran the risk of opening a commentary that wasn’t relevant to your current study.
Accordance 11 has now introduced the Info Pane to solve that problem. The Info Pane acts as a clearing-house of information about your passage. To open it, simply select Info Pane from the Add Parallel pop-up menu.
The first section of the Info Pane shows you the covers of the first five (or more, depending on your settings) commentaries which contain a comment on the verse at the top of the window. As you scroll through the text, the information in the Info Pane will update to reflect the current verse.
Previewing and Opening Commentaries: If you hover your mouse over one of the commentary book covers, you’ll see a preview of the comment in the Instant Details box. That way, you can quickly skim through your commentaries to see which are most helpful. Once you find one you want to explore further, simply click the book cover to open that commentary in a parallel pane. Hold down the shift key while clicking a cover to force the commentary to open in a vertical pane, or hold down the command key (on Mac) or Ctrl key (on Windows) to open the commentary in a separate tool tab.
Customizing the Info Pane: You can customize how your commentaries appear in the Info Pane by selecting Set Info Pane Display from the Gear menu.
In the dialog that opens, you can set the size of the covers and text, hide the covers altogether, and specify how many commentaries you want to appear when you first open the Info Pane. Once you’ve made your changes, be sure to click the Use As Default button to make the changes permanent.
Organizing Your Commentaries for Best Results: This is where I’m going to show you how to get that “extra push over the cliff” I promised. Unfortunately, this post is already getting long, so it will have to wait. In my next post, I’ll give you advice for how you can arrange your commentaries in the Library to get the most out of the Commentaries section of the Info Pane. Stay tuned…