Greek Psalms in a Year (feel free to join us)

[Ken Simpson]

Helen: Would you (kindly) consider setting up a Greek Psalms in a Year forum here, if it's not too much trouble? I can elaborate on how I think it would benefit Accordance, and it certainly would be a kindness to those of us reading, especially since so far a number of us are Accordance users. I could help moderate if needed.

 

Why would you need a forum? Couldn’t you just do it in a thread like this? And have your “members” follow it? Not against the idea, just wondering why you need a whole forum?

[Anthony Pyles]

It seems like the multiplicity of threads that would evolve (I imagine distinct threads would emerge on separate psalms) could easily take over the Original Languages forum!

[Abram K-J]

Tony--I have an Evernote note started already. Graham added an Accordance workspace. I'll just go ahead and share the link here, and anyone who is able to meaningfully contribute to it is welcome to.

[Abram K-J]

It seems like the multiplicity of threads that would evolve (I imagine distinct threads would emerge on separate psalms) could easily take over the Original Languages forum!

 

Yes, that is what was behind my request (possibility of distinct threads), but just to be clear:

• Russell started the group, so I want to defer to what he already has in place. Facebook is the "official" clearinghouse. I'm just spreading the word and want to be helpful in resourcing folks. I knew Accordance users would be interested, so posted this thread here.
• These are Accordance Forums, for things relating to Accordance (except for the Mainly Mac and Windows Wisdom threads, which still have tangential relation).
• As such, I wouldn't want to put a bunch of Greek Psalms posts in Accordance's Original Languages forum on a regular basis next year, unless there was something Accordance-specific to the question.
• However--I think Greek Psalms in a Year is a fantastic application of Accordance to everyday life, and not everyone is on Facebook, and Accordance is going to be the primary lens (other than print and perhaps occasional reference to other software) through which at least I do Greek Psalms (and Russell is an Accordance guy, it seems), so I was requesting it of Helen as a sort of favor. It would drive traffic to the forum and Accordance site and store, and Accordance would stand to benefit.
• If Helen or Joel or whoever is up for granting such a favor, "Greek Psalms in a Year" would probably be somewhere in between "Mainly Macintosh" and "Original Languages"--not always about Accordance per se, but often involving it, I would think.

This post is too long already--I'll email Helen offline with my request. I know she and the others are at SBL right now anyway. I understand if it doesn't fit with the forums--as I say, it would be a favor, if she were to allow it.

 

I will put up a Public link to the Evernote bibliography/resource guide in this forum again, soon.

[Abram K-J]

Here's the public link for the Evernote note. But I don't think you can edit from that link... only view it. This is just a start--more is needed. I'll keep adding to it.

 

Tony--I'll email you with a link that I think will let you add edits.

 

Anyone else interested--message me through the forums (or contact me here) if you want editing capabilities for that note and can add to the resource list for Greek Psalms.

[Russell Beatty]

Hey Abram, Russell

 

I'm not sure if I will participate or not - I'm reading Genesis right now in the morning and Hebrews in the evenings. I have just completed Hebrews and will start again on it soon because of its complexity. So I may not have time. But ....

 

I wanted to ask something about vocab. Are you just using Accordance glosses and output from Analysis or Parsing from queries against the LXX (Rahlfs or Goettingen or ....) ? If you are it would be a simple matter to get lists for weeks or months onto something like Cram so that people can crib vocab on their phones or the web. I do this all the time and have tooling for it.

 

Anyhow let me know what you think.

 

Oh and are building a User Tool for this ?

 

Thx

D

 

I was just going to use Rahlfs, but I'm going to get Gottingen as well. Currently, my reader broke with the release of Accordance 11. They are working on it. As soon as it is fixed, I can upload some vocab. I may do a couple for versions. Maybe one with NT words 50+ and one with NT words 10 or 20+.

[Russell Beatty]

I love the idea of having a dedicated forum for Greek Psalms in a Year. It would give access to those outside of Facebook.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

 

I was just going to use Rahlfs, but I'm going to get Gottingen as well. Currently, my reader broke with the release of Accordance 11. They are working on it. As soon as it is fixed, I can upload some vocab. I may do a couple for versions. Maybe one with NT words 50+ and one with NT words 10 or 20+.

 

Ok - I was wondering about Goettingen but I suspect I'll stick with Rahlfs at this point.

I am part way through processing vocab out of Acc. I'm planning to do weekly lists - so 48 of them. Currently I've done a simplified version query count 1-50 in the LXX which usually works for me. But I'm automating the process so I can regenerate those files with little effort, with different queries if desired. Next step is to automate the preparation of the import files for Cram, and I'll try Anki imports as well I think. I'm still playing with Anki to see if I like it.

 

Thx

D

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Daniel,

 

I installed Anki yesterday to experiment with hieroglyph cards, and I found out it is Unicode compliant and easy to change the fonts.

 

If you make cards with a Greek Unicode font in Anki, users who join the group can customize them with their preferred fonts.

 

So, I want to encourage you to make the cards for Anki, especially for the benefit of Windows users who join the group. Mac users will probably prefer Mental Case.

 

I would like to join, but I don't know yet if I'll have time. It will be a last minute decision.

 

Thanks for all your work and help on this Forum.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

Edited November 27, 2014 by Michel Gilbert

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hey Michel,

 

Thanx.

 

I'm about halfway through the Anki manual - it's gotta a pretty broad feature set it seems though I'm no expert in the field.

But last night I did get a Greek deck I pulled from their shared cards working in my chosen font as you describe and I got it onto my Galaxy phone using the same font. All very cool. I can already see some features such as the tag support which would all study by verbs or nouns etc, quite easily, could be driven by data that is already in Accordance. I would need to do more work for that though so simpler for now. But once it's all automated it will be easier to play with things like that.

 

Alas I know nothing of Mental Case but that it exists. If it has a simple import format even that might be possible.

 

I too am not sure how much time I can devote to this reading group either. I just found out that another reading group I was in may regroup in the Spring. And I also have my own reading projects. In the end the more reading the better but there is only so much time. But this is an opportunity to develop a few tools I want like a batch query processor for Accordance (Mac using Applescript), which I got running in a simple form last night. And more Python based tools for intermediate processing.

 

Thx

D

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi ya,

 

I now have an Anki deck package for all words in the Psalms (from Rahlfs) which contains words occurring 1-50 in the LXX.

There is one parent deck with a subdeck for each week of the reading plan. This results in about 3000 words in aggregate across all weeks. Anki however removes duplicates and so that results in a complete deck of about 1384 words. I've set it up with a note type PsalmsInAYear which provides for specification of your own font. I have it sync'd up to my Samsung phone and that all works nicely too. Finally there is a word in there for which there is no gloss in Accordance. I'll probably crib a gloss for it from BDAG or LSJ but haven't done so yet.

 

If anyone would like to try it out and let me know what they think or any issues that they find PM me and I can send you the apkg file to import.

 

Finally, I have it automated with a bunch of scripts so I'm considering how to build alternative packages. Right now because of a breakage in the [HITS ?] function I cannot generate vocab based on occurrences in the GNT which is where I wanted to start.

 

Thx

D

[Ken Simpson]

Hey Daniel, how about the Exchange? Want it there?

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Well in the end yes - This one is a bit of a prototype.

 

Thx

D

[Abram K-J]

Daniel, is this the app you mean? Not cheap, at least for iOS.

 

Russell (and Daniel): anything you upload (of the Accordance variety), whether here on the forums or via Ken on the Exchange, will be welcomed by me and, I'm sure, others. Thank you!

[Michel Gilbert]

is this the app? Not cheap, at least for iOS.

 

Hi Abram,

 

Daniel will confirm that it is the app.

I'm working with Unicode hieroglyphs and other fonts in Anki. It works great.

Anki is free for Macs and PCs at http://ankisrs.net/

It is expensive for iOS. I get around the problem of free for the desktop, paid app in iOS with remote desktop software. Perhaps you've seen my post at http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13747

Anki works beautifully in the one I use, iTeleport.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Yeah its kinda odd - the developer has chosen to charge on iOS to support all development. On all other platforms it's a freebie. He explains this in his FAQ. And he's not actually responsible for all the platforms. I cannot remember which one but may the Android one - another team took the desktop app code and did the work for it and they decided to follow the original desktop pricing and licensing, viz it's free. I don't know if there is some additional rationale for this, like the iOS distribution requires fees to Apple or it's harder to develop for some reason. The whole thing is written in Python which available everywhere so I don't know.

 

Incidentally, Mental Case on Mac is is 29.99 and 4.99 on iOS. I am not sure how they compare.

 

All that said, a I remain surprised by how much good software is given away or sold cheaply - LibreOffice, Anki, quite frankly even Accordance's starter, Firefox etc.etc. $25 is not that much when you consider how much we already spend on learning a language overall. Of course, that's easy for me to say as I don't even possess a unit running the OS you have to pay on.

 

Anyhow I have yet to get a Cram export going. Cram is more simple in its function I think so its import file would be a bit different. And it too requires a paid license to remove the advertising, which appears to have increased of late (the ads, not necessarily the licensing).

 

Abram, if you use a Flashcard app what one is it ? Import formats don't differ that much.

 

Thx

D

[Λύχνις Δαν]

BTW, just found out that Mental Case can import Anki exports. That should simplify things.

 

thx

D

[Abram K-J]

Thanks, Daniel--all I have on my phone is the Zondervan Greek and Hebrew Mounce ones, as well as some of the stuff Danny Zacharias did.

 

So I'm definitely open to ideas.

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Ok, so a few interesting things I saw poking about.

 

Mounce has a Greek Anki set that he points you too from his Greek website. He's done something I thought of doing but have not done yet, which is to add a frequency field so you can create filter sets by frequency. He has a sort order for chapters of his text, and reverse cards. Nice for anyone using BBG.

 

Danny Zacharias built his stuff from Accordance definitions apparently.

 

On Mac, Mental Case has a good rep. and seems to have at least the functionality of Anki - perhaps more - I've not looked to be honest.

 

After that there are many others. I don't have more to recommend than the one's I've used like Cram, Anki and a couple of others. I've used FlashWorks from Mounce and that had at the time an awkward data entry paradigm. But it has great function for cribbing words by type (verb, noun etc...), by frequency etc. etc. No mobile version that I know of. I tried one or two apps from the Play Store (google's app store) but while they might have an installed font to resolve rendering issues the db's could not be expanded easily or they had other limitations. Whatever I use I need to be able to build content for by scripts.

 

Thx

D

[Abram K-J]

Daniel, I'd love to try your deck of vocab. Can I do it using only the free desktop app for Anki?

 

Russell has Accordance fixed yet whatever was broken so that your reader stopped working? Would love to get a gander at that, too....

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hey Abram, I'll ping it to you tonight when I'm at home. I don't have an easy way to do it here even though it's on my phone. I'm playing with it to see what makes sense to tweak. And yes you can just use the desktop app.

 

On the bug, it turns out both Russell and I reported it with different test cases. It's not fixed yet - we need a new post-11.0.2 version. It unfortunately prevents creation of vocab sets (or readers) that consider words occurring in the LXX that are also known in the GNT. As a result I am currently stuck producing, what I believe are larger data sets for the Psalms than I want. So I am hoping it gets fixed soon so I can produce a better data set.

 

Thx

D

Edited December 1, 2014 by Daniel Semler

[Russell Beatty]

Abram,

 

What Daniel said. I'm sure that it will have to be a new release of Accordance to fix the bug.

[Abram K-J]

Thank you both!

 

Did anyone from Accordance say anything about a fix when you posted?

[Russell Beatty]

They said that they could duplicate it and were working on fixing it.

[Abram K-J]

Thanks, Russell--not sure how long ago that was... hopefully they'll have it fixed before mid-December. Looking forward to seeing what you've come up with!