NA28 Textual Apparatus text missing for multiple passages

January 9

On 1/6/2025 at 10:46 PM, A. Smith said:

This is really bad. I mean, we should always confirm such essential primary texts with the printed version for research. But to have such a critical tool missing this sort of info is not at all good and needs to be fixed asap. Move it to the top of the pile.

+1 for moving it to the top of the pile. The premise of Bible software is that it is a viable replacement for paper volumes.

Aside from the (very important) academic reputational issues, there may also be contractual commitments to the copyright (and ISBN?) holders.

January 9

22 hours ago, KevinPurcell said:

From my limited knowledge I think many of the people in this list are not at Accordance any longer. Which ones are actively working as programmers today?

I don't have any inside knowledge about who is or who isn't working for Accordance but I can tell that many of the people on my list have been active on the forums in some way which I know does not prove they are still working with Accordance, but it also does not seem that they have left Accordance either.

@Iconoclaste last visited these forums 22 hours ago, @Sean Nelson last visited these forums 11 hours ago, @Mike Garrity last visited 14 hours ago, @Ken Simpson last visited on Tuesday, @David Lang last visited in August (but I am pretty sure he is still with Accordance).

Grace and Peace

January 9

15 hours ago, Lawrence said:

+1 for moving it to the top of the pile. The premise of Bible software is that it is a viable replacement for paper volumes.

Aside from the (very important) academic reputational issues, there may also be contractual commitments to the copyright (and ISBN?) holders.

I have a message into our module developers about this and will also bring it up next time I meet with one of them.

January 9

David wrote our January newsletter. He's been doing a ton of work behind-the-scenes. He's been so busy he hasn't had much time to frequent the forums lately. It'd be fun to co-present with him again in a future eAcademy. Last time I did that it was fun.

January 10

20 hours ago, Brian K. Mitchell said:

I don't have any inside knowledge about who is or who isn't working for Accordance but I can tell that many of the people on my list have been active on the forums in some way which I know does not prove they are still working with Accordance, but it also does not seem that they have left Accordance either.

@Iconoclaste last visited these forums 22 hours ago, @Sean Nelson last visited these forums 11 hours ago, @Mike Garrity last visited 14 hours ago, @Ken Simpson last visited on Tuesday, @David Lang last visited in August (but I am pretty sure he is still with Accordance).

Grace and Peace

Are you stalking me @Brian K. Mitchell? 😆I am an extremely part-time mostly honorary consultant. I get here when I can. And help if I can. But with 4 grandkids, and a busy practice, plus some church ministry it is very much an occasional moment. I’m very happy for people to reach out to me. And I haven’t chosen to leave accordance. I love it way too much.

January 10

On 1/9/2025 at 3:30 AM, Michel Gilbert said:

Ken is a physician, not a programmer.

That is certainly true. Though I have done a little programming, but too long ago, and not in anything of any use. We used Fortran on punch cards! Then I did a little BASIC. I’ve done some shell scripting but that’s about where my expertise ceases in this area.

January 10

On 10/9/2023 at 1:30 AM, Accordance Enthusiast said:

This is sure a mistake as there are sigla markings in these verses but no information in the Apparatus.

The Apparatus picks up again in verse 14.

Thank you for reporting this. Scroll up and you will see the content you are looking for.
In this case, because someone in the past made the decision to merge the apparatus and cross-references modules and the variants in question are preceded by the reference field pointing to both verses 12 and 13, the software is “looking” in the wrong paragraph (the cross-ref paragraph) in the apparatus module and that is why it is not displaying the relevant notes in the instant details and misaligning.
I am of the opinion that it is better to keep separate apparati in separate modules and that is the approach I took when working on BHQ, as you can see here. However, I have no plans to separate the NA28 Apparatus back into its original two component modules at this time.

January 10

On 1/5/2025 at 10:17 PM, Accordance Enthusiast said:

It's been more than a year. There has been no update for the NA28 apparatus. I paid for this thinking it would at least be complete.

Here is another example of a missing section in the Apparatus. The whole module will have to be checked for this type of issue:

There should be two sections of information with textual variants for verse 23 based on the sigla in the text module, but there is no information in the Apparatus.

Again, scroll up in the apparatus and you will see the content you are looking for.

January 10

On 1/9/2025 at 1:30 AM, Michel Gilbert said:

Silas left.

Ken is a physician, not a programmer.

Mike is a programmer. I'm not sure if iconoclaste or David would consider themselves to be.

They posted that they are looking for more programmers (two if I recall).

Hey, wait a minute, I never said anything about programers rather if you will kindly go back and notice I was replying only to the following

On 1/8/2025 at 9:34 PM, KevinPurcell said:

Can you introduce us to them? One thing I’ve always loved about the Accordance in the past is that we got to know the people in the company.

My point was the singular point that some people in the Accordance company do visit the forums and we do still know some of the people in the company. Notice my comments here (link) and here (link) .

January 10

33 minutes ago, Brian K. Mitchell said:

Hey, wait a minute, I never said anything about programers rather if you will kindly go back and notice I was replying only to the following . . .

??

Brian, “rather if you will kindly go back and notice I was replying only to” Kevin’s:

“Which ones are actively working as programmers today?”

January 10

1 hour ago, Michel Gilbert said:

?? Brian, “rather if you will kindly go back and notice I was replying only to” Kevin’s:

Sorry, for the misunderstanding.

January 10

6 hours ago, Ken Simpson said:

And I haven’t chosen to leave accordance. I love it way too much.

I am very happy to hear this!

January 10

9 hours ago, Ken Simpson said:

We used Fortran on punch cards!

Hi, Ken. Me too, which I posted about here.

January 10

I call @Ken Simpson Accordance's Biblical Languages genius. I know he's too modest to call himself the title, but to me, he is. He answers some of our most complex Biblical Languages questions with such excellence. He's helped me get un-stuck multiple times!

January 11

14 hours ago, Dr. Nathan Parker said:

I call @Ken Simpson Accordance's Biblical Languages genius. I know he's too modest to call himself the title, but to me, he is. He answers some of our most complex Biblical Languages questions with such excellence. He's helped me get un-stuck multiple times!

I am in agreement with you on this one!

January 12

On 1/10/2025 at 9:20 PM, Iconoclaste said:

Scroll up and you will see the content you are looking for.

On 1/10/2025 at 9:23 PM, Iconoclaste said:

Again, scroll up in the apparatus

@Iconoclaste, thank you for your feedback. However, when I scroll up the text jumps back one verse and I lose the text I'm working with. I have multiple panes with various texts, and I can't have the text jumping around and disappearing if I want to see the corresponding notes in the Apparatus. Hopefully this will be corrected in the future...

January 13

@Accordance Enthusiast David is looking into this to see how quickly we could adjust this.

January 14

4 hours ago, Dr. Nathan Parker said:

@Accordance Enthusiast David is looking into this to see how quickly we could adjust this.

Thank you @Dr. Nathan Parker. I will be looking forward to a fix on this. I use it paralel to the CNTTS apparatus, so if I scroll up one verse in the NA28 apparatus it jumps so far in the CNTTS apparatus that I cannot compare the two.

January 14

Thanks for the info!

Tuesday at 04:07 PM

A major update to NA28 Apparatus is now available through Check for Updates. I'll list all the improvements in another forum, but I want to address some of the issues raised here. My goal is to help you all better understand how Accordance works and why the apparatus for certain verses appeared to be missing. Even some Accordance power users seemed to misunderstand what they were seeing.

When I first saw the complaint, I was terribly confused, because it was reported as "missing text." Then the "missing text" was confirmed. Yet when I checked it out, I simply scrolled up in the apparatus pane and could see the text in question. Nothing was actually missing.

To understand what was happening, you need to understand how Accordance synchronizes the scrolling of parallel panes. In any commentary, there may be multiple references to a given verse: in an overall section heading, in a paragraph overview of several verses, and finally, in a comment on that specific verse. Which of those should be displayed when you scroll to a verse in your Bible pane? Accordance syncs with the LAST comment on a verse because in most commentaries, that is the comment most specific to that verse.

In the NA28 Apparatus, which combines apparatus for a given verse, followed by cross-references for that same verse, syncing to the last reference for a verse would skip the apparatus and show the cross-references, which is not what you want. So we hacked things slightly when we developed the module. For verses that have both apparatus and cross-refs, we put the reference before the apparatus in the Reference field, and we removed the reference before the cross-refs. That way, the apparatus would sync and the cross-refs would be displayed below it. For verses where there was no apparatus and only cross-refs, we left the verse reference before the cross-refs so they would sync properly. In most cases, this worked fine.

But there was an edge case which the original developer of this module either missed or didn't realize required a different solution. In Revelation 9:12-13 (and Luke 16:22-23), the apparatus combined two verses and was followed by cross-refs for each verse separately. If the developer had followed the pattern of removing the reference before the cross-refs so the text would sync with the apparatus, it would have been unclear which cross-refs applied to which verse. The developer chose to leave the reference in for those cross-refs, with the result that the syncing skipped over the apparatus.

By revealing a little of what goes into “making the sausage,” my goal is to help you avoid being hampered when we make a mistake in the design of a module. Even with the previous release of NA28 Apparatus, you could always scroll up in the pane containing the apparatus to see whether there is apparatus for that verse. Note that I do not mean scroll back to the previous verse in the Bible pane, which will move the apparatus pane all the way back to the previous verse. I just mean that you hover your cursor over the apparatus pane and scroll back a little to see the immediately preceding context. This is good practice to do with any commentary, since by syncing to the verse-by-verse comments we are skipping the section headings and paragraph-by-paragraph comments which may have valuable information.

By way of example, here is a window with NA28, NA28 Apparatus, and CNTTS Apparatus. I've scrolled up in NA28 Apparatus to show the apparatus, and down in CNTTS Apparatus to the relevant portion of the apparatus, all without causing Accordance to sync to a different verse:

Now, these cases with apparatus on more than one verse definitely needed to be handled differently. In addition to syncing past the apparatus, you could not hover over the sigla in the NA28 pane to see the corresponding apparatus in the Instant Details. I believe I have now fixed all these cases, and in doing so, I tweaked the format to make it more compact and (hopefully) clear. Here is what you get when you scroll to Rev. 9:12 now:

Note that I left in the reference for each set of cross-references, so why does the pane scroll to the apparatus instead? Essentially, it's another hack. Rather than putting the references for each set of cross-references in the Reference field, I put them in the Scripture field so they would not affect the syncing.

As I said, I'll list all the improvements of the new update elsewhere, but I wanted everyone here to understand what was actually happening. At no time was any text missing, although it certainly looked that way. My hope is that by understanding how Accordance handles the syncing of parallel panes, you'll be less likely to get thrown off by such syncing issues.

Hope this helps, and sorry we took so long to fix this issue. I missed it when it first came up last year.

Tuesday at 08:53 PM

4 hours ago, David Lang said:

Hope this helps, and sorry we took so long to fix this issue. I missed it when it first came up last year.

Thank you very much @David Lang! I will check out the download and get back to you with more feedback!

Shalom!

Tuesday at 11:11 PM

Sure enough, the issue is resolved in Revelation 9:13 and Luke 16:23. Thank you very much for the improvements and updates to this module!

NA28 Textual Apparatus text missing for multiple passages

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