Combined Texts

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi ya,

 

I was looking at combined texts just now and have a couple of questions.

 

I was toying with the idea of using the Devotional Readings tool with Greek texts to provide a range of Greek material to read. I noticed that the Ctrl-click (this is Windows 10.1.3 beta 4) would open all the refs in one go. So I set the tool primary text to GNT28-T and the secondary to LXX1. Wasn't sure that this would fly but figured it was worth a try. Indeed it does not exactly fly. It opens one tab in GNT28-T and recycles it so in fact you don't get the OT refs. OK I worked around it another way and that does work, but then I remembered I'd seen Combined Texts somewhere. I found they were only available in the Add Parallel popup.

 

Questions :

 

1. Why are Combined Texts not usable anywhere a regular text is, issues of tagging aside ? For example I cannot open a tab with a Combined Text as far as I know.

2. I would have liked to be able to set the tool display for the devotionals to the combined LXX + GNT28 but I cannot. Is there any way to do this ?

3. Given 1 and 2 are not possible, what exactly is the intended use of combined texts ?

4. Under Manage Combined Texts one sees a specific set of such texts. It is possible to delete entries but not to add new ones. Why is it that the set is restricted and why is deletion permitted if you cannot add items ?

5. Could you point me to the documentation for this feature ? I did try to search for information on these in the help but did not find it.

 

Thx

D

[Joel Brown]

Hi, Daniel! Thanks for trying out the feature, and the great questions. Let me address them each:

 

1) Consider the logic behind a pane - it displays verses. Which ones, though? And in what verse order? There always has to be something that determines what verses are displayed. So, to open a tab with LXX+GNT28 is nice, but since there's no way (yet?) to search both of them together, your results are always limited to either LXX or GNT28, whichever one you searched. So, you see, they function best as a parallel pane.

2) The use of combined text panes in the 'Text' window is honestly an interesting one - nobody really brought it up in testing. Since it still follows a 'Text Order', just like point (1) above, you can't really think of a single pane managing both texts. However, since this isn't searchable, it may have some more work to be done...

3) Combined Texts give you the ability to have your parallel panes span multiple versions. This can be useful in a variety of scenarios: Searching english, your results may span Old and New testament, and it can switch automatically between them (LXX+GNT, HMT+GNT, etc.). Or, searching NRSV you have apocryphal hits and want your ESV pane to include an apocrypha from somewhere. Or, you want to have a BHQ, but fill in the unfinished parts with a HMT or BHS text. In each of these cases, you have run a search whose results are more than the display of one or your texts alone, so two texts can help fill in the job.

4) You can add any combined texts that aren't already on the list. Note the two-squares menu that appears on your combined text panes, or appears on eligible normal text panes. It is how you can manage what is attached to what. Also, if your pane is showing two texts that aren't on your current list, you can save them as a new set.

5) Head in the help to the New in 10.2 (New Features in Version 10 > Version 10.2 Updates) and click the link in the first item.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Joel,

 

Thanx for this. I need to play with the two-squares menu which I had not noticed.

I am trying this on the windows beta 4 at the moment and its help does not have the 10.2 new features bit though the code does have the functionality. I don't think the online help ( at accordancefiles2.com has been updated either as far as I can tell. So I'll have to wait till I get back to my Mac to read that unless you have a direct link to the relevant doc that I can look at. I think the use as a text case is interesting for this feature - I'd be interested to know if its possible and whether

 

Two more questions :

 

1. Can a combined text have more than two texts in it ? I suspect it can but haven't time to test it right now.

 

2. Is there any precedence between the texts in a combined text where both (all) texts contain content for the same books and verses ?

 

I suspect both of these are covered in the doc that I can't get to quite yet .... but if not they'd be useful to add.

 

Thx

D

[Joel Brown]

Hey, Daniel. The online help has been (mostly) updated. Here's the link to the New in 10.2:

New in 10.2

 

To answer your questions:

1. As it currently stands, no, just two texts in a combined text pane.

2. The precedence is that the smaller (fewer books) text goes first. So, in a BHQ+BHS, the BHQ will always take precedence as it is much smaller (obviously only for the places where they overlap). Similarly, if you did something like a GNT28 + VULG, the Vulg would fill in your Old Testament, while the GNT28 would take over in the New Testament as it is smaller.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Joel,

 

Gave this a go just now. I see that this is really about parallel panes having content adequate to match the range of content in the driving pane (searched pane). Its not really about creating previously unknown versions of the bible to search or work with. I noticed a couple of things.

 

1. If you alter the search version so it differs from all of the displayed versions things get kind of confusing. I did this and despite my participation in the other thread on that topic it took me a few minutes to work out why Gen was not part of ESVS - in fact its not in KJVA. Oooopps.

 

2. In the parallel pane containing the combined texts (haven't yet come up with a shorthand for this - what do you guys call it ?) if you click on the display text the full menu of text choices appears and the check mark is against the first text not the alternate even if the alternate is currently in the display. If you then change the displayed text the display goes blank which was unexpected. This particularly because I altered the primary text not the alternate. In fact if you then click on the double square icon to add the alternate again you see its still got a tick against. Redoing the search does not restore the display. Re-selecting the alternate does. Now, this could be intended or it could be a windows issue or it could .... well I'll stop guessing and let you explain.

 

3. I can see that searching a mixed language combined text would be tricky, but I can see how if both texts were the same language it would atleast in theory be possible.

 

4. I wonder if it might be useful to augment the pane title with an indication as to the other text attached to that pane. So for example if I have LXX-GNT it would be nice to know if the display was currently showing LXX that the alt. was GNT rather than GNT28 or something else for example. Of perhaps just knowing the combined text name and the currently displayed bit would be fine. I don't know exactly and I haven't played enough to make a solid suggestion here. I also realise that screen real estate will be an issue.

 

5. In the Add Parallel -> Combined Texts pull down it seems only combined texts for which you have the installed modules are displayed though all the combined text names can be seen in the Manage Combined Texts dialog. Is that correct or is there some other reason I don't see these in the pull down - like perhaps its a recently used list ?

 

Interesting feature - I'll have to see how it works or doesn't for me. As discussed above I know one use case I'd like it to work for.

 

Thx

D

[Erik Alair]

Not wanting to steal this post, but when I used the combined text feature with HMT and GNT, it changed the default font size and other settings for one of the texts based upon which text I opened first. In this case, I have a larger font size for the Hebrew, and so when I combined the GNT to it, my combined Greek text font increased to the same size as the Hebrew font. I'd like to combine them both but keep the font sizes different.

Is this a bug that needs to be fixed, or is this the way it is supposed to work?

[Helen Brown]

We decided that it was better to scale the two texts proportionately, using the first text added as the base. If there is a lot of demand to keep the default sizes for each text, we may be able to add that later as a preference.

[Erik Alair]

Thanks for the response, Helen. My problem is that I like the Hebrew to be larger than the Greek due to the vowel pointing. I would definitely like to see a preference for this option in a future update. Thanks!