major highlighting issues

[Kristin]

I am writing this post at the request of the technical support department.

 

I had been using Accordance 12 and it had been working great. I use it for classes, which means that I often need to read a text and then look away and then go back to the text. As a result, I love using highlighting as a way to mark pronouns and not lose track of who is who.

 

I would put one highlight symbol under one person and another symbol under another. I would thus select a word and highlight, then I would press my repeating highlight shortcut (command 8, but I think it is originally command E) and it would highlight it again with the same symbol. Super simple, super fast. Using the fictitious verse as an example, “he (grape) said to him (star), 'I (grape) will go to you (star),' and he (grape) went to him (star).”

 

However, in accordance 13 when I select the symbols I have a highlight looking symbol and I need to DRAG the SYMBOL along the word as if I were highlighting. The symbol thus drops randomly and I need to pick it up and center it. Then I am selected a new word but the act of selecting it drops another symbol.

 

It appears to be that in Accordance 12 you select the word and then highlight with the symbol, where as in Accordance 13 you need to first select the symbol and then highlight, since you can't select a word without highlighting again. That in itself would be fine (I would not say I like the change, but it something someone could get used to), but it is very time consuming that when you “highlight” with a symbol, that the symbol just drops randomly and is not centered over the word like in Accordance 12. This causes the extra step of centering the word.

 

More importantly though, when I press command 8 it no longer repeats the same highlight, but repeats the last highlight which is not a symbol. So if I drop a grape icon (and do the extra step of centering it) and then press command 8 to insert it again on the next word, instead of another grape icon it underlines the word pink.

 

I see a lot of advantages to Accordance 13, but the new way of highlighting was so disruptive to my work that I wound up downgrading to Accordance 12. Technical support had been screen sharing with me and had seen the issues I was having with the highlights randomly dropping (causing the extra centering step) as well as the way that command 8 no longer repeated the last highlight. They then said they thought it would be good if the two ways of highlighting (the old way in Accordance 12 and the new way in Accordance 13) could be a toggle or something so that people would have the option to keep using the symbols and highlighting as it had been done in Accordance 12. (I had realized that there were new highlights added in 13, but had not realized the whole thing had been totally changed before I was working with it.)

 

I am dependent on highlighting enough that I will just stay with Accordance 12, but I hope this is helpful for the Accordance team and I appreciate all of the work which has clearly been put into designing Accordance 13.

 

Respectfully,

Kristin

[Mark Allison]

No problem. If you don't want to drag to highlight, just uncheck "enabled" in the highlight palette. 

[Kristin]

Hi Mark,

If I am understanding correctly, the reason why the repeating highlight did not work (and repeated a totally random highlight instead) is because this box was checked. Is that correct?

[Mark Allison]

Command-8 still works to repeat a highlight symbol. Just make sure you don't have the "enabled" option checked.

[Kristin]

Hi Mark,

Ok, thank you for clarifying.