Giving Accordance Notes a Try

[Brian W. Davidson]

I've never really trusted any Bible software to keep my notes secure, but I've been giving Accordance a go recently.

 

For the past several years I have used various markdown schemes, and I currently have thousands of notes in Ulysses. I don't think I'm going to try to transfer all those over, but moving forward I'll just make new notes in Accordance. If I refer back to particular notes in Ulysses then at that time I'll move it over to Accordance.

 

I'm putting all my notes in one file, but they are short, true "notes," as in marginal type short comments or lists of words. I know file size can be an issue, but with this current MO it will be a long time before I reach that threshold — no images or long reflections, here.

[Rev. Dr. Timothy M. Hall]

Good news is since we download and own everything even if, God forbid, something happens to Accordance our files are still accessible.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Tim Hall

[ScottDF]

I've always put all my notes in a single file in LaTeX. The PDF version is 500+ pages long. Using Alt-Tab I can switch to my editor with ease. When I was in BW I had this file. Then I switched to Accordance and have the same file. Alt-Tab is just another key sequence for me of the scores of them I already use in Accordance, so fundamentally, my notes are seamless to my study. YMMV, but having the notes separately means they are equally useful simultaneously in all the Bible-related apps you might use, BW, L, or Accordance. There's a real advantage to that. 

[Brian W. Davidson]

My primary impetus for making a move away from an independent system is that I'm finding I don't add notes as frequently as I would like anymore because of the friction of navigating to a different app, doing the necessary clicks to get to the file, and then typing the reference, etc. (2) I find that I don't refer to these notes nearly as much as I do when I see a little note link right there beside the verse in Accordance.

 

But I hear you on flexibility.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Brian W. Davidson

[Larry Wing]

On 2/23/2022 at 7:56 AM, Brian W. Davidson said:

I've never really trusted any Bible software to keep my notes secure, but I've been giving Accordance a go recently.

 

For the past several years I have used various markdown schemes, and I currently have thousands of notes in Ulysses. I don't think I'm going to try to transfer all those over, but moving forward I'll just make new notes in Accordance. If I refer back to particular notes in Ulysses then at that time I'll move it over to Accordance.

 

I'm putting all my notes in one file, but they are short, true "notes," as in marginal type short comments or lists of words. I know file size can be an issue, but with this current MO it will be a long time before I reach that threshold — no images or long reflections, here.

Mind telling me how you use Ulysses?  I've been keeping notes for a little while in Accordance but prefer to find an independent app for keeping notes so no matter what Bible software I'm using - or if not using anything - I can jot a note that is easily found. So far I haven't found a third party app that I like.

 

[Brian W. Davidson]

Larry, sorry for the late reply — traveling.

 

Here is a pic of the basic setup. I have a group for each corpus — LXX, HB, GNT — and a sheet for each biblical book. An H1 is for the book name, H2 for the reference:

 

[I tried my best to attach a screenshot but I can't seem to make the file small enough to attach]

[Fabian]

9 hours ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

[I tried my best to attach a screenshot but I can't seem to make the file small enough to attach]

May you zip it. He can then download it. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by Fabian

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

[I tried my best to attach a screenshot but I can't seem to make the file small enough to attach]

 

That's bizarre. We no longer have the individual file size limits, just a total limit of around 5 GB (which I can't imagine you'd reach with basic screenshots.

 

Try again when you get a chance and let me know what kind of error messages you're getting.

[Brian W. Davidson]

It tells me that there is a 120-something KB limit.

[Guest]

Just now, Brian W. Davidson said:

It tells me that there is a 120-something KB limit.

 

That's bizarre. What happens when you just try to drag and drop the image?

[Brian W. Davidson]

Same thing.

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

Same thing.

 

Try it now.

[Brian W. Davidson]

On 2/26/2022 at 5:28 PM, Larry Wing said:

Mind telling me how you use Ulysses?  I've been keeping notes for a little while in Accordance but prefer to find an independent app for keeping notes so no matter what Bible software I'm using - or if not using anything - I can jot a note that is easily found. So far I haven't found a third party app that I like.

 

In addition to the message above, Larry, here's a screenshot:

 

56 minutes ago, R. Mansfield said:

 

Try it now.

Rick, all good now. Thanks!

 

[Brian W. Davidson]

On 2/26/2022 at 5:28 PM, Larry Wing said:

Mind telling me how you use Ulysses?  I've been keeping notes for a little while in Accordance but prefer to find an independent app for keeping notes so no matter what Bible software I'm using - or if not using anything - I can jot a note that is easily found. So far I haven't found a third party app that I like.

 

One additional note: since the verse references are H2s, I can use the side bar on the right to jump straight to the particular verse I'm looking for:

[Abram K-J]

40 minutes ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

One additional note: since the verse references are H2s, I can use the side bar on the right to jump straight to the particular verse I'm looking for:

 

That is a great idea.

[Larry Wing]

1 hour ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

One additional note: since the verse references are H2s, I can use the side bar on the right to jump straight to the particular verse I'm looking for:

 

Thank you. Looks very nice.

 

[jlm]

21 hours ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

One additional note: since the verse references are H2s, I can use the side bar on the right to jump straight to the particular verse I'm looking for:

This format is pretty close to what my script to convert markdown to RTF notes expects: https://gitlab.com/jlmp/acc-great-commentary/-/blob/master/code/mkRTFnotes.py

You could use a modified version of this to convert your markdown notes to something you can import into Accordance. The Ulysses version could remain the definitive one, and the Accordance notes would be a read-only version that appears in your workspaces.

 

The script expects H3 for verses (using H2 for chapters). I don’t know how comfortable you would be with the command line and Python, but if you change the 2 to a 3 on lines 26, 31, and 57, it should look for H2 instead of H3. The other difference is that it expects 1Corinthians instead of 1 Corinthians. That’s a little more complicated to fix: unless you want to change your notes, the regular expression on line 35 will have to be changed, and a little code added to turn 1 Corinthians into 1Corinthians for the file name.

[Brian W. Davidson]

1 hour ago, jlm said:

You could use a modified version of this to convert your markdown notes to something you can import into Accordance.

 

This is really interesting. Some of the notes in Ulysses I have already manually moved over. Would it make these duplicates or merge them somehow?

[jlm]

45 minutes ago, Brian W. Davidson said:

 

This is really interesting. Some of the notes in Ulysses I have already manually moved over. Would it make these duplicates or merge them somehow?

The Python script, using pandoc, will produce an RTF file for each note on a directory you designate. Accordance will import the files into a new note file. At that point, the notes you manually moved over would be in an old notes file where they always were, and the imported notes in the new file. Accordance doesn’t have a merge function that eliminates duplicates. However, if the old file only contains notes you manually moved over, you could remove it from your library, leaving the file on disk in case you want to go back to it at some point.