New Features in Version 14
Following is an overview of new features in Version 14 of Accordance Bible Software. For more information on working with one of these new features, click the linked text.
New Features in Version 14
Dynamic Word Study
- Reorganized the File menu—>New submenu, Amplify and Right-Click menus to accommodate new Word Study feature. Research now appears beneath the Texts. Word Study appears below Research.
- The Word Study tab is accessible from the File—>New menu, the Tool Bar New icon, the Amplify menu, the Right-click menu, and from Live Click.
- The Word Study item in each menu will present a submenu of appropriate options.
- For new menus, these include English, Greek, and Hebrew.
- Amplify menus will present Word and Key Number options from a Key Number text.
- Amplify menus will present Lexeme, Inflected, and Root from a tagged Greek or Hebrew text.
- If opened from the Amplify menu, the Right-click menu, or Live Click, the selected word or Key Number is inserted into the Entry field of the Word Study tab.
- The Word Study tab has sections for Word Info, Text Compare, Word Pie Graph, Word Bar Graph, Frequency Graph (i.e. Hits Graph), Key Number Lexicons, Dictionaries, Lexicons, Grammars, and Journals.
- Each section can be displayed or hidden via a disclosure triangle.
- The sections displayed depend on the kind of word searched for (i.e.: English, Key Number, Greek, or Hebrew)
- Graph sections include a token size control for sizing of individual graph types.
- Text Compare and Graph sections include a plus icon to add other texts for comparison.
- Each text compare list or graph can be closed via its close icon, or changed to a different text via its token pop-up menu.
- Sections displaying book covers can be expanded to include more books by clicking + show more. Click - show less to remove them.
- Options for the display of the Word Study tab can be set via the Set Word Study Options dialog (accessible via the Display menu).
- The Word Study Entry Box Includes the search text pop-up menu, History menu, entry field, and Recycle button.
- Word Study searches are filtered as follows:
- No special commands other than [Key ?] with a Key numbered text.
- No phrases
- Wild cards and word lists are allowed (when entered as a series separated by commas within parentheses)
- When amplifying to the Word Study tab…
- A phrase selection will search for the first word in the phrase
- A Hebrew selection will use the main word and ignore selected prefixes/suffixes
- A Hebrew selection will not search for specific homographs, though specific homograph searches can be entered manually into the Word Study tab.
- A word search will not use the exact search character (=), even though exact searches can be entered manually into the Word Study tab.
- English Word Study
- Can search by word or Key number
- If searching by Word, a token enables display of All Keys, Greek only, or Hebrew only. This option affects the word count, text translation, and the various graphs. This token does not appear when doing a Key Word or Language Word Study.
- Word Info includes
- Word count in displayed text version
- A definition from the default Greek or Hebrew dictionary
- Clicking Key Number lexicons hyperlinks to Key Number
- Clicking Word lexicons hyperlinks to Greek or Hebrew word
- Original Language Word Study
- Word Info includes
- Word count in displayed text version
- Root and Gloss info
- A definition from either the default English dictionary or the Webster’s Dictionary
- List of Texts in Pull-down menus for Text Compare and Graphs
- English word in a text with no Key numbers: all texts except grammatically-tagged original language texts
- English word in a text with Key numbers: all texts shown
- Key number in text with Key numbers: Exclude texts with no Key numbers or tagging, and exclude original language texts which do not match the language of the Key number searched.
- Original Language word: Exclude texts with no Key Numbers nor tagging, and exclude original language texts of a different language. (An exception for the LXX texts may be added in the future.)
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User Tool Improvements
Typed User Tools
- User Tools can now assume a fundamental “Type” of content, which enables additional Accordance capabilities.
- Possible types are:
- Dictionary (i.e. Articles organized by English or Roman word)
- Greek Dictionary (i.e. Articles organized by Greek word)
- Hebrew Dictionary (i.e. Articles organized by Hebrew word)
- Commentary (i.e. Articles organized by Verse Reference)
- General Tool (i.e. No particular organization)
- A Typed User Tool gains an additional primary field, based on content of the relevant language found within a Title Paragraph. For instance, if a title paragraph is marked “Adam”, if the type is Dictionary, then Adam will be included in the primary field. For any other type of tool, since Adam is not in the primary language, it will be in the “Titles” field.
- In addition, converting a Typed User Tool to a regular Tool will enable amplification options, such as being the preferred Greek Lexicon, or preferred Commentary in instant details.
- Types can be chosen upon creation and import, as well as modified at any time using the new “Tool Options” menu.
Other Improvements
- Support for Importing User Tools as unicode
- Importing plain text will attempt to detect UTF16 vs UTF8 via BOM, or if no BOM present, seeing if any invalid UTF8 characters. If so, assume it is Windows ANSI / MacRoman.
- HTML will now always import to a unicode tool, but still read the “charset=” meta code to assist in interpreting the encoding of the characters therein.
- PDFs will now import as unicode user tools
- All newly created User Tools are unicode
- Saved User Tools will require version 14 to be read due to new features and trimmed word groups
- Added Tool Options pop-up to User Tool Window with the following options
- Ability to change the User Tool Type
- Convert to Non-Unicode
- Convert to Permanent Tool
- Added Support for new fields
- Uncial / Coptic
- Syriac
- Arabic
- Transliteration
- Manuscript
- Fields are populated based on Unicode font language code
- Added option to set all non-unicode original language text with a default font.
- User Tools no longer show dimmed empty user groups
- Removed code for reading < Accordance v5 User Tools
- Removed the Font Name/Style popups from a unicode user tool. Everything should be default font, or an auto-converted original language font
- The Field token no longer lists the 6 default word groups (dimming the unused ones), but now lists only the fields used in the tool.
- Converting User Tools between unicode and non-unicode requires a confirmation, as information may be lost either way. Going to unicode may lose some subtleties of Yehudit, and going from unicode doesn’t support certain characters, like Cyrillic or Chinese.
- Option to save and close any open edit windows
Easy Answers (Curriculum)
- Support for editable blanks and boxes within Accordance Tools to enable answering questions in workbooks, Bible studies, etc.
- Answers are stored in a file of type .amyans inside an Answers folder in the Accordance Files folder.
- After filling in the blanks, the answers are displayed directly in the tool.
- A language icon menu allows the user to choose Default, Greek, or Hebrew keyboards.
- The gear menu includes an option to Hide (and Show) Answer Boxes.
- File—>Save Text Selection now includes a Tool Answers… option. These are saved to an rtf file which contains the text of the answers and a URL link to each answer in context.
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Phrasing
- Allows the user to add Return and Tab characters in any verse of a Text module too show discourse structure
- Phrasing is stored in a file of type .amyphrase inside a Phrasing folder in the Accordance Files folder.
- The Text pane gear menu contains a Phrasing submenu with the following items:
- Phrasing Break: adds a carriage return (shift-return)
- Phrasing Indent: adds a tab (shift-tab)
- Phrasing Delete: deletes any selected phrasing characters (shift-delete)
- Hide/Show Phrasing: Hides and shows the phrasing
- Lock/Unlock Phrasing: prevents or allows editing of the phrasing
- When adding a new tab at a place in the text where there is no phrasing indention, a return character is automatically added to force a line break.
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Quick-Click Navigation of Texts
- A Table of Contents icon now appears on all Search tabs to the left of the Context Slider
- Click to select book, then click chapter, then click verse
- Double-click at any point to go to complete the navigation
- Click and hold on any book, chapter, or verse to complete the navigation
- Back and Go To Buttons
- A List option can be selected in the Search Tab preferences
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New Citation Types
- Now in addition to Turabian, SBL, and Simple citations we’ve added APA, Chicago Manual of Style, and MLA.
General
- The Lexeme word pick dialog will no longer show the German gloss for ETCBC if the option to suppress German gloss is turned on.
- Fixed and enhanced several items related to Hebrew Bible texts:
- When using source highlighting, fixed the occasional highlighting of the wrong word in Hebrew Bibles for words after a Ketiv/Qere form.
- Fixed the Parsing tab display of Ketiv/Qere forms that sometime show a double bracket, especially on the ETCBC Hebrew text.
- Fixed amplifying of compound names in the ETCBC Hebrew text to work properly.
Dark Mode Support
- Accordance 14 now supports Dark Mode on Windows.
- No longer requires restarting Accordance to change Light/Dark appearance.
- Added a toolbar button to toggle Light/Dark appearance.
Changes
- Accordance will only display the Info Pane Cross References section if it finds an “exact” verse reference entry in the default Cross Reference Tool.
- The safe mode option for “Clear cached downloads” may now clear up certain cases where purchased items don’t show up in Easy Install.
- Refactored the internal module reference handling during multi-threaded Searches (Live Click, Research, Word Study, Info Pane, etc) to address reported random crashes on Windows.
User Notes/Tools Fixes
- Various issues that could occur after updating a User Tool.
- Issue that prevented User Tool edits from being saved.
- Tools added to the Library could be added to the wrong category and/or possibly crash (e.g. when merging User Tools).
- Converted User Tools were not being added to the Library, which prevented it from opening.
- Possible “blank” User Note when adding/installing an existing User Note to Accordance.
- Unicode conversion issues with certain characters.
Greek/Hebrew Unicode Conversion Changes
- Standalone Koronis is converted to Smooth for accuracy.
- Yehudit would not get the right Holem character if it precedes the Pashta.
- Better Yehudit positioning for metheg and hireq for certain preceding characters.
Miscellaneous Fixes
- Clicking on a Word Study Frequency Graph would not properly hyperlink to the correct search results.
- A Keyword Word Study was not handling InterText or Inflected hyperlinks.
- Issue that would cause results to be missed when Researching with a verse range condition. (e.g. Live Click Word Usage within Current Book)
- The Info Pane > Parallel Passages would not hyperlink to Parallel tab.
- Incorrect Instant Details/Crossover Highlighting in the first verse of a new Search.
- Ability to search and display compound clause forms in the Holmstedt Hebrew Syntax.
- Syntax searching in the Holmstedt syntax for certain cases involving Null search arguments in a phrase.
- Accordance would become unresponsive/crash when adding certain Andersen Forbes Syntax elements to a Construct.
- The action menu items in the Analysis Graph tabs were not working properly.
- Table of Contents searching in a unicode Tool.
- The Atlas and Timeline would not show up in the Library if no Parallels were installed.
- Various improvements to module downloads during Easy Install.
- Easy Install would not install an untagged version of a Text where the tagged version was installed. (e.g. CSB17 will now be installable even if CSB17S is installed.)
- Tweak to Easy Install to possibly improve the display of recently purchased modules.
- The WiFi sync dialog was missing the Accordance Mobile icon.
- Several dialogs had misaligned OK, Cancel, and Help buttons.
- Multiple potential crashes when opening an Info Pane, rebuilding the Research Cache, handling a missing Module, and shutting down Accordance.
- Possible crash when merging User Notes.
- Crash when opening Workspace with a WordMap pane.
- Potential crash when using InterText Analysis option.
- Research crash when trying to search a module that has been deleted.
- Potential crash when rendering pane text.
Mac Specific fixes
- Rendering issues on macOS Sonoma that caused Pane content to be improperly clipped and crash on macOS Sonoma 14.3
- Copy Picture was not working on Intel Macs running Sonoma.
Windowsc Specific fixes
- Preferences Search was not working properly in some instances.
Changes
- Various improvements to Setup Assistant workflow:
- better module installation (no prompt to install, automatically moves to next step if all modules are installed, etc)
- choice of default Text and Tool resources.
- updated default Workspace after initial install.
- The PLACE Construct item can now find the position of a word from the end of a field by using negative numbers to indicate the position from the end of a field.
- The Workspace window title no longer appends “Accordance”.
- Improved Edit Window toolbar correlation between Font Style popup and Bold/Italic buttons.
- The Accordance account Username appears in the Toolbar > Easy Install “tool tip” (hover over Toolbar item to see account name).
Miscellaneous Fixes
- An issue that caused dropped characters when copying certain Hebrew words and pasting into User Notes/Papers, etc.
- Highlight style rendering issue when showing Interlinear.
- Restored the drawing of chapter numbers and chapter line tics for the Hits Graph.
- The Set Default Display > Preview Text for User Tools was not working properly (errant error messages, missing preview, potential crash when invoked from the Library).
- Bold and Italic style information was not retained when pasted into a Unicode User Tool.
- The progress bar wouldn’t show up during Check for Updates.
- For certain cases, a newly installed Tool module would not be placed in the proper Library category.
- Crash that could occur when adding a Favorite Workspace divider.
- Possible crash/corruption when adding a Timeline Custom List.
Mac Specific fixes
- Unicode string conversion issues that caused Easy Install / Application launch problems on Intel Macs running Sonoma.
Changes
- The ability to set the size of the window toolbar has been deprecated for some time and is now mostly removed from macOS 13.0+. On macOS 11.0 and above, we added an Appearance preference to choose the window toolbar appearance.
- Settings > Appearance > Use legacy window toolbar appearance:
- TRUE: The window title is above the toolbar and the icons are regular size.
- FALSE: The system chooses the style automatically and the window title is inline with the toolbar.
- Copy as Verse Reference will now use a standard dash character in all cases, to prevent encoding issues with En-Dash.
- If a workspace is saved in dark mode, the colors saved in the file will now be the dark mode colors
- Images in a Tool will now be scaled down when the pane narrows instead of having the edge cut off.
- Now support an antecedent Syntax search on the Holmstedt Hebrew Syntax database. Added the option of showing the antecedent hit for phrases and clauses in Greek & Hebrew Preferences and Construct tabs.
Display Settings Fixes
- The Reference font in the preferences was being saved as the content font.
- Could not set the hit style to plain.
- Dimming of the “Use English Book Names” control.
- The Default Tool pop-up in advanced Text display settings wasn’t working properly.
Tool Image Layout Fixes
- An extra line break was inserted before an image if the pane was narrow.
- A centered image would be left justified if image display was set to very large.
- An image in a table would not respect center justification in some cases.
Miscellaneous Display Fixes
- Text section headings could be inserted before the wrong paragraph (e.g. Neh 1:1 LSB).
- Display of verses with poetic style.
- Potential paragraph justification issue.
- Issues when mousing over words after a Ketiv/Qere section in a WordMap alignment pane.
- Various Easy Install login dialog issues with improperly greyed out controls and errant login status.
- The controls from the Login dialog could improperly show up on the Easy Install dialog.
- The Set Analysis Display dialog was not properly handling the PrtSpeech item when adding it to a Items to Sort column.
- Where the Help button was misplaced on several dialogs.
Miscellaneous Fixes
- Inappropriate Live Click > Word Study error message when clicking in white space.
- Error that could occur during Live Click > Word Study if clicking on punctuation.
- Allow Arabic and perhaps other Texts with Strong’s number to be added to the Interlinear Texts.
- Verify that non-biblical corpuses such as Athenasius no longer appear in the Interlinear pull-down menu items.
- Custom URLs would not work properly with certain module names (e.g. Schaff’s History).
- User Tool Commentaries would remove certain “aliased” scripture hyperlinks when editing.
- Searches with certain characters would be garbled when being read from a workspace file.
- Accordance could be unresponsive when performing a Hebrew Grammatical Research.
- Potential Web Browser crashes and performance issues.
- Issues with saving the validation for Targums word map.
- A possible crash during Easy Install.
- Patch for a crash while cross highlighting.
Mac Specific fixes
- Workspace size was not being saved properly if the Workspace was Full Screen.
- Several Dialog static text labels were misaligned on Apple silicon desktops.
- Accordance’s dialog default buttons were indistinguishable on recent macOS versions. Now the default buttons have a colorful(accent) background on all platforms.
- Removed incomplete Quick Look support in Text/Tool search tabs. Hope to revisit in a future revision.
- The “Acc - View Verses” Text Service would not open verses when using the “default Text”.
- Various issues with the display of digamma character.
- Crash when typing an answer in Christian Worker’s Commentary.
Windows Specific fixes
- Crash when doing a Live Click > Word Study with the “delayed” interaction option ON.
- In some cases, the Workspace size would be stored too large.
- Workspaces would sometimes not maximize properly when a saved Workspace was opened.
- New workspaces would be created slightly smaller than the current workspace, instead of the same size.
- Potential crash when editing a User Note.
- Crash that could occur if a download was cancelled.