The one thing that continually frustrates me with Accordance

[Ιακοβ]

Accordance is really great, but there is generally just one thing that continually frustrates me. When I come across some text like this inside accordance:

 

Although the longer ending is clearly secondary, it is nevertheless very old. The earliest witnesses to the longer ending come from the Epistula Apostolorum 9–10 (c. 145), perhaps Justin Martyr (Apol. 1.45; c. 155), Tatian’s Diatessaron (c. 170), and Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.9–12; c. 180)

 

It seems likely that I would have some or all of these resources in accordance somewhere in some of those modules with heaps and heaps of stuff in them. I imagine it would take me half an hour to try and track down these documents in accordance.

 

I know algorithmically/automatically inter-linking these things might not be trivial, but being able to navigate into the early church/patristics from commentaries would be a huge time saver, and encourage more engagement with patristic studies.

 

Maybe one day? 

[R. Mansfield]

Okay, this is from the Pillar Commentary (I used Research to find the quotation). The Justin Martyr and Irenaeus references are linked. I can click on the reference and go straight to the referred texts. The Epistula Apostolorum (Letter of the of the Apostles) may not be in Accordance (someone can correct me if I'm wrong), but we should get it. We do have the Diatesseron ( accord://read/AGOSP-E#Diatess._1 ), but Pillar does not offer an exact reference, so no link there is understandable. But assuming the Epistula Apostolorum is not available in Accordance, everything that should be hyperlinked seems to be so.

 

 

 

[Ιακοβ]

Oh, you are right in this case! It is so often that they don't like I didn't examine this example carefully. That said they do link to a resource I don't own (And I already have the complete ultimate package).  It did take me probably a little over half an hour of clicking and searching, but I eventually found them in modules that I do own:

 

• [Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., The Apostolic Fathers With Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (ANF I; Accordance electronic ed. 9 vols.; New York: Christian Literature Company, 1885), n.p.](accord://read/CF-AN#2829)
• [Tatian Diatessaron](accord://read/CF-AN#76162)
• [Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., The Apostolic Fathers With Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (ANF I; Accordance electronic ed. 9 vols.; New York: Christian Literature Company, 1885), n.p.](accord://read/CF-AN#5724)

 

It looks like that $100AUD ($79.99) AGOSP-E greek module needs to go on my wishlist.   It does appear that the links are probably better off going to AGOSP-E  rather than, for example, CF-AN, but it doesn't help for those who own CF-AN and not AGOSP-E.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Ιακοβ

[Helen Brown]

The Ultimate package is far from the complete set of Accordance modules. It's a very good value all-round package appropriate for many serious users, but does not include the more specialized language texts, many lexicons, and many many commentaries and other books. The cost of the entire library is closer to $30,000, rather than the $2,000 for the Ultimate.

 

If your special interest is in Greek you might want to consider upgrading to the Greek Master, and there is also a Hebrew Master. Those are comprehensive for their languages.

[Ιακοβ]

The Ultimate package is far from the complete set of Accordance modules. It's a very good value all-round package appropriate for many serious users, but does not include the more specialized language texts, many lexicons, and many many commentaries and other books. The cost of the entire library is closer to $30,000, rather than the $2,000 for the Ultimate.

 

If your special interest is in Greek you might want to consider upgrading to the Greek Master, and there is also a Hebrew Master. Those are comprehensive for their languages.

 

Thanks Helen! It's certainly on the wish list, perhaps one day I will be able to afford it. 

[Rick Bennett]

To give you a bit of background, there are a number of Texts in Accordance that fall into the early 'Patristic' period. These were assembled from various sources, tagged in Greek (only Greek portions even if the source contains portions in Latin or other languages) and bundled with an English translation (typically but not always extracted from the Church Fathers series). These are the texts that will be tagged in other resources in our library. There are still many others that are not tagged because we have not created separate Text modules for them. The CF series is very difficult to link to accurately from a programming perspective because of how it is formatted. We'd love to find a better solution, but as of now the options would require a significant amount of work that is just not high enough on the priority list.

 

I hope this helps to clarify things.

[Paul Meiklejohn]

Rick, I was about to ask a question on that very issue; Why there were links to certain modules when we in fact had the same text elsewhere in the likes of the Church Fathers (CF-AN).  A very helpful explanation.  Thanks you. 

[JonathanHuber]

If you look at the CF table of contents, you can see that the organization is really variable. I can't imagine how overhauling this for hyper linking would be easy enough to be free. It's marvelous that such a large collection of patristics writings is so affordable, and I don't mind digging for the reference myself in order to keep it that way.

[Ιακοβ]

If you look at the CF table of contents, you can see that the organization is really variable. I can't imagine how overhauling this for hyper linking would be easy enough to be free. It's marvelous that such a large collection of patristics writings is so affordable, and I don't mind digging for the reference myself in order to keep it that way.

 

Yep, now being able to search the table of contents is really helpful. It certainly cuts down the time trying to find things compared to before this feature was added. I'll certainly get better at finding things over time, however there are still some things I am like "I don't know what that is, I bet its in accordance, I wonder how to find it". Especially when the reference is something like "Apo Enifs XI.5.2.5."  If I had an ability to earn the money needed to buy all the resources in accordance, I certainly would!  maybe one day.

Edited May 29, 2016 by Ιακοβ

[dandennison]

To add to the lower priority list:

 

Link at the very minimum the module Comprehensive Crossrefs to the CF series. On iOS especially it is hard to remember precisely where in the CF series I'm looking for, because once I find where that church fathers writing is, I forget the passage number.

 

As a result the workflow looks like two round trips between the text and the CF series.

 

Alternatively, we could allow opening arbitrary texts in panes on iOS, or more than 2 panes on iOS, but I suspect this is even less likely to happen soon....

 

I might just learn some Objective C to submit patches....