Siri Shortcuts...

[SpiritandFire44]

Are there any plans to integrate Siri shortcuts in the iOS version of accordance?  Thanks!

[Joel Brown]

We're currently looking into Siri Shortcuts for the best way to integrate them into the app.

 

As usual, though, we won't make any promises about what or when new features will be adopted

[SpiritandFire44]

Well if I can give you some suggestions...

 

1.  BE able to shortcuts for Greek, Hebrew and English Versions

2.  Be able to split the screen with different texts

3.  Be able to do the boolean searches

 

This would be AMAZING to implement

[Joe Weaks]

There is definitely promise here.

 

SpiritAndFire44, some of your suggestions don't make sense to me. It sounds like you're wanting to use Shortcuts to add voice commands withing the Accordance App. I would point out that this is not what Siri Shortcuts is designed for. 

 

The most basic to start with would be would be a global voice verse lookup.

 

A command for "Look up verse"

   to which the "Dictate text" shortcut block would then listen for the verse range for you to dictate.

 

 

FYI, since there is the "Pass URL to Next" shortcut, this is already close to possible.

 

[SpiritandFire44]

Thanks for the valuable information Joe.  I confess I am not an expert on shortcuts.  I will investigate this.  I have however, seen some apps that have Siri shortcuts built into them already.  It is this that I was thinking of when for instance, I would select which texts would be searched, and which texts the split screen would confess.  Does this make any sense or am I missing something?

[Paul Meiklejohn]

A command for "Look up verse"

   to which the "Dictate text" shortcut block would then listen for the verse range for you to dictate.

 

 

 

Joe's suggestion of dictating a verse look-up would be amazing. 

[Joe Weaks]

Just to clarify, you can already basically accomplish a global Siri verse lookup. The problem is that you have to spell out the reference: “romans twelve colon three hyphen seven”. 

 

See example proof-of-concept video here.

 

We could actually build an imperfect shortcut that parsed a normal string like “romans twelve three to seven” and formatted it properly into "Romans 12:3-7" to send to Accordance. It'd be best if it was done inside of Accordance's bundle so they had control of the parsing.

[Rick]

I currently have a Siri Shortcut working, but it’s based off of the Accordance URL scheme (of which I cannot find any documentation online); and it only works if you give it a specific verse (Mark 5:3). I can’t figure out the syntax for getting it to recognize a series of verses (eg. Mark 5:3-6).

 

Oh, it should be noted that it inputs whatever is on your clipboard. If you know your way around Shortcuts, you can modify it to take text other ways.

 

You can give it a spin here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/83de5cfeaee949bf84d3f5af739ee254

[Joe Weaks]

Rick, things have improved since your last Workflow, in that Shortcuts can now prompt to dictate text. See my example video.

For sure, voice is increasingly the primary input for our devices.

 

That said, doesn't your previous Workflow do a REgEx search a string for verse references on the clipboard? Are you saying it only finds Mark 5:3 right now but not 5:3-6? That wouldn't be difficult to improve. LOTS of stackoverlow threads about RegEx verse range matching.

[Rick]

Rick, things have improved since your last Workflow, in that Shortcuts can now prompt to dictate text. See my example video.

For sure, voice is increasingly the primary input for our devices.

 

That said, doesn't your previous Workflow do a REgEx search a string for verse references on the clipboard? Are you saying it only finds Mark 5:3 right now but not 5:3-6? That wouldn't be difficult to improve. LOTS of stackoverlow threads about RegEx verse range matching.

Thanks, Joe. My shortcut is just two actions: “URL” and “Open URLs”. Here is the link to my current version of this Shortcut that you can check out: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/be7a884da5634d64a3637620ebd899f4

 

Do you mind sharing a link to yours?

 

I’m personally not a fan of voice input since I do a lot of work from coffee shops. Ideally, I want to pass text (specifically, a Bible reference) to Shortcuts and have it open in Accordance.

[Rick]

My URLs have stopped working. Is there a new scheme? 

[Graham Buck]

There is not. The scheme is found here: http://accordancefiles2.com/helpfiles/OSX12/Default.htm#topics/05_dd/using_links_common_tasks.htm

 

I looked at your shortcut:

accord://read/esvs/;?[Shortcut Input]

The read pragma is for opening a resource and scrolling to a particular location. For your above shortcut you could potentially be passing a range of verses and thus the command is failing due to it attempting to scroll to a range. I admit, the iOS app gives less information than the desktop app does. We should look into fixing that. If, on your desktop machine, you type your shortcut (fill in the shortcut input with any given verse range) into your web browser of choice's search bar and hit enter it will open Accordance and you'll get an error message.

 

If you create another shortcut:

accord://search/esvs/;?[Shortcut Input]

This will do exactly what you're probably wanting. It will open the app and search for the verse range specified. If you want to see the range in context just tap on the glasses to exit search mode and enter reading mode.

 

By that last little bit of terminology you can probably see why we like to be specific with with the terms used in urls. Searching is a separate activity from reading. That being said, I'm not quite sure, without looking into revision history, why your shortcut would work before but does not now (I've only been working with the iOS for the past 9 months).

 

My recommendation would be to have two shortcuts. One that is for simple opening a resource and scrolling to a location (single verse ref), your existing shortcut. And another which is a searching shortcut (the one I suggested), which will accept verse ranges. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Graham Buck

[Rick]

Oh my goodness, this is exactly what I want. I didn't know about the SEARCH command. 

 

This is perhaps a long shot, but is there a way to use the URL scheme to copy the passage to clipboard, or even better, send the text back to another app via x-callback? I'm trying to use Apple Shortcuts to create a Note of the combined daily office readings. At the moment, my shortcut is pulling the text from an online Bible, but it would be so much faster if instead it used Accordance. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Rick

[Graham Buck]

We currently do not support x-callback. It's something I've glanced at, but it's not currently on the features to implement list. It could be considered if enough users show a desire for the functionality.

[Rick]

We currently do not support x-callback. It's something I've glanced at, but it's not currently on the features to implement list. It could be considered if enough users show a desire for the functionality.

 

Thanks, Graham. That makes sense. My assumption is that x-callback is a pretty rare request, although with the advent of Apple Shortcuts, I hope that more people get curious about what’s possible. (I just built an Apple Shortcut that looks up the upcoming Anglican Sunday lectionary assignments and combines all four Scripture passages into one PDF. At the moment, it’s finding the Bible content online, but it’d be so much faster if processed locally via Accordance.) Thanks again for your help! 

Edited October 3, 2019 by Rick

[Rich]

I love the thought of doing this:  "Hey Siri, Browse to Verse Luke 1:5" or even, "Hey Siri, Browse to Verse", response from Siri, "Which verse?", "Luke 1:5" — and it opens in Accordance...  I've just started playing with Shortcuts and it seems like I should be able to do this...  (but I may be wrong).

 

Searching for text would be next.  I have something similar in Alfred on Mac, but obviously not Siri enabled.  

[Joe Weaks]

It was over a year that you could do this; you can see the proof of concept in the video I posted upstream. ^ ^ ^  The main improvement is that you need to add a more sophisticated reference parser. We say "Mark one verse three", which needs to become Mark 1:3.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Joe Weaks

[Rick]

It was a year that you could do this, but see the proof of concept upstream ^ ^ ^  The main improvement is that you need to add a more sophisticated reference parser. We say "Mark one verse three", which needs to become Mark 1:3.

 

One could manually build this with Apple Shortcuts pretty easily. There are actions for dictating speech and replacing text. It would just take awhile to build. :-)

[Rick]

For what it's worth, folks can see what I've built with Apple Shortcuts. I'm an Anglican pastor who preaches from our Sunday lectionary most Sundays. (I also have a past career in technology.) So, I built this tool to lookup the next Sunday's prayer of the day and Bible passages, and then present them in a single PDF or Note. If you know what you're doing, you could probably tweak parts of this to look up passages from the Revised Common Lectionary, if that's your thing, or another lectionary your tradition might follow. 

 

Check it out

[Dataduffy]

Just wondering if there is any consideration on adding native Siri shortcut actions to the iOS app?

thanks

John