Survey: How many would like a "Find on Page" utility?

[TYA]

A "find on page" utility (command+F for Mac, ctrl+F for PC) has been requested before, but I want to see who would join me in pushing for this enhancement in a future release of Accordance.  If you would like to see this tool, please reply to this post with a "+1"

 

(This is the little box that pops open in many applications which allows you to type and search for a word on the page, typically moving down the page to the next occurrence.)

 

Thanks!

[OSchrock]

There are times that I could definitely use that feature, yes. 

But, in the meantime, I recently learned that I can option+click a section in the table of contents and then perform searches that are limited to that subsection. (See screenshot) 

 

 

[Λύχνις Δαν]

+1

 

I assume by find in page you mean in the text currently visible on the screen.

 

Thx

D

[TYA]

I assume by find in page you mean in the text currently visible on the screen.

    

Rather, down to the end of the page, at least--regardless of whether the whole page is immediately visible on the screen.  In other words, exactly how "Find" utilities work in all internet browsers I know of (IE, Google, Firefox, etc.).  They all provide a quick and efficient means of scanning down the page for a word you want to find.

 

I could give a million examples of the usefulness of this, and how over a short period of time it would save the serious researcher countless hours.  Here are just a couple hypothetical examples to illustrate the point.

 

#1) I need a reminder of what "Eus" stands for in the sigla of the BHS Apparatus.  I choose to manually open the BHS Apparatus, then go to the table of contents, and select "Sigla..."  But the list of sigla is very long, and I'm not sure how Accordance has chosen to filter sigla in the native search (e.g. "Titles," "Content," "Reference," etc.**).  All I have to do is simply open the "Find" utility, and search for "Eus."  I would get to what I was looking for in 3 seconds flat.

 

#2) I want to see if Keil & Delitzsch's commentary says anything about "Messiah" in their footnote for Genesis 49:10.  But they wrote 10 pages of material on that verse.  I could either spend 10 minutes reading the entire commentary (but I have many other things to do / look for), or I could pop open the "Find" utility and type "Messiah" (or perhaps a wildcard to the end) to find "Messiah's".  I would find out if they wrote "Messiah" within 3 seconds flat.

 

** Knowing how Accordance would designate something in the search filters shouldn't cause any problems, but in reality, I've literally spent hours being unable to find things because of this / and posting those issues here on the forums.  This is therefore not hypothetical.  I've spent hours laboriously searching for things (and then documenting the issues) that could have taken seconds or minutes.

 

Case in point: I was actually searching for something in the CNTTS Revised Apparatus a while back, and I assumed that Accordance would have designated it under one particular search filter, but it ended up being designated some different way.  Bottom line, I remember it taking about 15 minutes to find something that could have been found in seconds.

 

If a universal "All" filter had been available, I would have found it very quickly, or if the "Find" utility I'm discussing here was available, I would have found it, as long as it contains normal English characters.  As i said before, I'm not against the many search filters; but there just needs to be a universal "All" search filter that doesn't box the user in, and force them to choose a route that might not be the correct one.

Edited August 4, 2019 by TYA

[MattChristianOT]

I think that would be a handy feature for sure

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Ah ok, that's a rather different from what has been proposed before now for a ctlr/cmd-F find on page I think. Also, there are a few problems. A module doesn't have the same definition of page as HTML does. Rather it has ranges (and scopes, which might be relevant) for the search. What you are wanting to do here can be done already by expanding the tool browser and defining a search range, by highlighting browser entries. But it rather also sounds like you want a search all text feature as well, not just individual indexed fields. That has been asked for before too, and indeed would be very useful.

 

To take your sigla example, Open the BHS Apparatus, open the table of context (tool browser in Accordance terminology) right click on Sigla Et Compendia Apparatum, select Content in the Search box and type Eus, Granted it's a bunch of clicks but it works pretty quickly. I cannot do the K&D one as I don't have it but the procedure is the same.

 

Re-reading your CNTTS case again it does seem the major issue is the all-text search. And all text regardless of language - thus unicode input for the search.

 

Thx

D

[TYA]

that's a rather different from what has been proposed before now for a ctlr/cmd-F find on page I think

 

No, I mean exactly a "Ctrl+F / Command+F" utility.  That's all I'm proposing here.  It has been requested for several years (the staff have told me).  I'd love to see it in the next major release.

Edited August 4, 2019 by TYA

[danielamari]

For ios? Yes

[Λύχνις Δαν]

For ios? Yes

 

You would definitely want it on all ports.

 

Thx

D

[Λύχνις Δαν]

 If a universal "All" filter had been available, I would have found it very quickly, or if the "Find" utility I'm discussing here was available, I would have found it, as long as it contains normal English characters.  As i said before, I'm not against the many search filters; but there just needs to be a universal "All" search filter that doesn't box the user in, and force them to choose a route that might not be the correct one.

 

Yep - this have been discussed before and I agree it would be very useful. And it would appear that given the research query support some of the required machinery may already exist.

 

Thx

D

[TYA]

Just found out one of my other favorite Bible software's (for Android) has "find on page" utility.  Awesome.

 

I want to hear from more Accordance users here.

Edited August 21, 2019 by TYA

[Fabian]

+1 

 

Greetings

 

Fabian