Apocryphal Gospels table of contents and a suggestion for creating TOCs for other resources

[mgvh]

I have the Accordance Apocryphal Gospels module. It is really difficult to use because there is no table of contents, and the book labels are not predictable. The only option is to click on the navigation window in the lower right and guess on a module name. (E.g., I could guess that "James" might refer to the Protevangelium of James, but what does "Luke" or "1Infancy" refer to?)

Poking around, I discovered the Accordance Read Mes files. There is a text file there (AGOSP - Read me first.txt) that has the bibliographic information along with an actual listing of the documents included in the collection. (They are not listed in the same order, however.)

Since it is a text file, I simply created a new User Tool. I've now started editing that tool by adding Accordance resource links to the book in the collection to each of the descriptions. Now I can open the user file, and see an actual book name and click on it to open to the correct spot.

It's rather tedious going through creating the links, and if I get time to finish the Apocryphal Acts one, I will post it here.

SUGGESTION:

Failing a regular table of contents, a similar thing could be done for similar works. It's not so bad with the Apostolic Fathers, but it would be very helpful to have them for Philo, Apocryphal Acts and Apocalypses, Perseus Classics, OT Pseudepigrapha...

Maybe the clever Accordance folks have tricks for quickly creating such User tool TOCs, but if not, maybe this can be a place for people to share them as they create them.

[Daniel L]

To see a list of book names, go to Display menu -> List All Book Names. I created a keyboard shortcut for this (Ctrl+B), which I use often. Unfortunately, it doesn't give the complete names, but it's an improvement. Note that you can open many book lists at once and side-scroll through them.

 

I don't like the way the hyperlinks work. Instead of taking me to the location in the active text tab, it opens to it in a new tab.

[Fabian]

From time to time Accordance updates the Read Mes Files. Last time ca. 1-2 year ago. You got a new file. This means if you alter them for you, you should then copy an paste your infos to the newer one or it will be lost. If you delete the  old. 

[Mark Allison]

I'm working on an update that will add complete book headings to the Apocryphal Gospels. That should help a little. 

[JonathanHuber]

I wish so much that there was simply a TOC for texts. For some texts eg the OT/NT, maybe some people don't really need it (though it's been requested multiple times in these forums). For other texts (eg everything listed in the original post), the process of going through list book names is cumbersome at best. The irony is that they have a nice TOC on the mobile versions, and I remain baffled that there's no handy way to access that on the desktop versions. 

[Mark Allison]

5 minutes ago, JonathanHuber said:

I wish so much that there was simply a TOC for texts. For some texts eg the OT/NT, maybe some people don't really need it (though it's been requested multiple times in these forums). For other texts (eg everything listed in the original post), the process of going through list book names is cumbersome at best. The irony is that they have a nice TOC on the mobile versions, and I remain baffled that there's no handy way to access that on the desktop versions. 

 

I agree. I can't think of a single good reason for not having a TOC for Texts, and the opacity of the names in "List All Book Names" list is frustrating at best. I'm pushing internally for changes in this area. 

[mgvh]

7 hours ago, Daniel L said:

To see a list of book names, go to Display menu -> List All Book Names. I created a keyboard shortcut for this (Ctrl+B), which I use often. Unfortunately, it doesn't give the complete names, but it's an improvement. Note that you can open many book lists at once and side-scroll through them.

 

I don't like the way the hyperlinks work. Instead of taking me to the location in the active text tab, it opens to it in a new tab.

Well, there you go. Thanks! I learn something new all the time. That helps, but it still does not fully tell me what "1Infancy" is in Apocryphal Gospels, but it's good for collections like Philo.

[Guest]

In the Display books pane, I think one of the columns needs to spell out the full name of the text. It's worse in some texts than others. For instance, try figuring out (unless you know) which letters are from St. Ignatius in the Apostolic Fathers.

 

[jlm]

Besides helping you find a book once you have the module open, full names are important when searching the Library for the right module. If I’m looking for the Protevangelium of James, I naturally start typing “prot…”, but will never find it that way. By now I’ve learned that I have to look for James, but that’s not at all obvious.

 

Also, when choosing book abbreviations for these non-Biblical modules, please follow some standard that’s already in use, like the SBL abbreviations, instead of inventing your own.

[Fabian]

21 hours ago, jlm said:

Also, when choosing book abbreviations for these non-Biblical modules, please follow some standard that’s already in use, like the SBL abbreviations, instead of inventing your own.

I don't know where the problem lies, but it is a pain between the Accordance ones and the German ones, to find out which is which. A lot of wild guesses all the time.

 

Does the SBL abbreviation in Accordance what you want. 

 

[Mark Allison]

21 hours ago, jlm said:

Besides helping you find a book once you have the module open, full names are important when searching the Library for the right module. If I’m looking for the Protevangelium of James, I naturally start typing “prot…”, but will never find it that way. By now I’ve learned that I have to look for James, but that’s not at all obvious.

 

 

 

We've just added some updates to the Apocryphal Gospels modules that will allow you to type "prot" in the Library and see any of these modules that contain the Protevangelium of James. The book headings will also display the full book title, and not the cryptic heading we have now. The update should be ready for download very soon. 

[jlm]

59 minutes ago, Fabian said:

I don't know where the problem lies, but it is a pain between the Accordance ones and the German ones, to find out which is which. A lot of wild guesses all the time.

 

Does the SBL abbreviation in Accordance what you want. 

 

I already had “Use SBL abbreviations” checked, but the Protevangelium of James is “James” instead of “Prot. Jas.”, the Gospel of the Hebrews is “Hebr.” instead of “Gos. Heb.”, the Acts of Andrew are “AAndrew” instead of “Acts Andr.”, the letter of Ignatius to the Ephesians is “Eph.” instead of “Ign. Eph.”, etc.

 

Since I’ve never published anything that requires me to follow the SBL Handbook of Style, I don’t particularly care whether they’re SBL abbreviations or not, but making up your own abbreviations is usually a bad idea, because it requires people to learn yet another set of them. Find abbreviations that are already in use, and use those. What’s particularly problematic is using abbreviations of Biblical books to mean something else: James, Eph., Hebr., …

[Guest]

I imagine the SBL abbreviations setting applies only to books of the Bible. AND I'm pretty sure we had some of those extrabiblical works released before we implemented the SBL option.

 

I do believe it would be a good idea to change our abbreviations of any extrabiblical texts that are listed in the SBL Handbook to those specifications. That would definitely break some Location URL links, but maybe there's even a way around that on the developer side. I'm not the one to answer that.