In the L4 Beta forum we could make suggestions for future developments. I hope I can do this here ... Forgive me if I'm suggesting things that are already possible and feel free to let me know how to do them!
My main interest here is the ability to effectively create various "search fields" (or "reference ranges" as they're called in the syntax search). Here are my 4 suggestions and 1 question:
1) Words have different "meanings" and it often makes sense to limit our syntactic analysis of a word to one if its particular meanings. For example, the syntax of ארץ (arets) differs depending on whether it has the political sense of "land/country" or the cosmic sense of "world/earth." Andersen-Forbes do sometimes tag lexemes according to their different lexical senses, but this tagging is still very rudimentary and inconsistent (as I outlined here). Given the subjectivity involved in such tagging anyway it would be best if we could delimit our own search fields based on our own criteria. Thus, I ask myself (you) the question: How can I quickly delimit a "reference range" (or "search field") for an A-F Syntax Search based on one particular "lexical meaning" of a word?
One method is to go to the Translation section on the Bible Word Study guide and select the gloss I want (e.g. the cosmic sense of "earth," as in Ps 24:1). For "earth" I get 654 out of 2479 hits (according to the NRSV translation, though oddly this second number varies across translations ... ). However, it would take me too long to create a reference range in A-F Syntax Search by manually typing up each individual verse. It would be nice if I could highlight all Bible the references with the gloss "earth" and automatically create a reference field for A-F syntax (perhaps a bit like the option Save as passage list in search results, we could have Save as reference range)
2) Related to this is the awesome new ability to create search fields based on our own highlighting. This potentially means I can create my own database based on my own criteria. For example, I could highlight the Hebrew Bible according to my own theory of sources or genre or function or theme or whatever and then search them accordingly. The problem is that manually highlighting every verse would take too long. It would be nice to have have a command saying "Apply highlighting to ..." with the ability to either type in my own criteria or import a previously created reference range.
3) Again, related to the above: It would be nice if I could specify my reference ranges according to parts of a verse, e.g. Gen 2:3a (before atnach) or even Gen 2:3aα (before the first major disjunctive, probably zaqef or segolta?). Even more awesome would be the ability to search according to the cantillation marks, which would open up Logos to a Jewish audience.
4) A Final suggestion: with all the rich reference ranges we'd be able to create, we'd need a number of copies of the same text. I regret that L4 has one less Hebrew Bible than L3 (Westiminster 4.0 has been disposed of). I'd been tagging that version according to poetic structures. Perhaps we could not only duplicate a tab, but also a resource and save it accordingly (e.g. Westminster 4.2 according to poetics/genre/source etc.)
And now a question: when will A-F Hebrew Bible in L4 be able to display the text according to the fields it had in L3 (Eifeld source, text type, Mowinckel's Jeremiah sources etc.)?
