Accordance User Bible equivalent
Hi Everyone,
I am running into a genuine problem with Logos for classes (I'm a professor), as I am dependent on an unfinished user created Bible.
In Accordance this is called a "User Bible." It is plain text, and as I make changes, I re-upload it. I am re-uploading my Bible maybe 2-3x a week.
I am aware of Logos' "Personal Book" but that is not an acceptable option since it requires convoluted html coding to even be searchable as a Bible. My concern isn't really the amount of time wasted putting all this html coding before and after every verse, as I am sure there is a macro for that. Rather, my concern is that my text is a work in progress, it is used for purposes other than Accordance or Logos, and I simply cannot litter it with html.
I tried uploading my text without the html junk, but it truly wasn't searchable and fundamentally didn't work.
Given all this, apart from the "Personal Book" is there a way to replicate Accordance's User Bible, which is searchable without html?
Thanks for any ideas.
P.s - I am really desperate, so I am open to creative ideas also.
Thanks,
Kristin
Best Answer
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With John's script, you should be able to go to Automator.app, create a new application and just make it:
do script "-E 's/^([A-Za-z0-9]+).? :([0-9]+) /[[@Bible:\1 \2:\3]] \3 {{field-on:Bible}}\4{{field-off:Bible}}/' input_file.txt > output_file.txt"
Just plug in your input file and output file names and it should make an icon that you can click and automatically create a new version for personal books. I think it will be faster than going through LibreOffice, but I can't test it without your Bible file.Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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I guess I don't understand. I macro mine just before loading into a PB … not writing over my original text copy.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Hi @DMB ,
Thanks for your response. Previously when that macro idea was explained to me, it was a complicated time consuming process and fundamentally didn't work. However, if you are doing it frequently without an issue, it makes me think that what had been explained to me before was not correct (hopefully).
I really wish Logos had a message center. :( I went to Accordance to try to send you a message but couldn't find you, so I guess I will ask it here…
1) Could you explain how you are doing this macro in detail?2) If I am understanding correctly, you are duplicating your file, running the macro on it, uploading it, then deleting the duplicate with the macro, and you can do this in a few minutes. Is that correct?
Thanks.
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I read macros and I automatically thought Keto Diet, since I’m using it to get rid of my Holidays weight 😂 Good luck with PBs
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And I have two thoughts that come to mind - first from training and using macros and the second being from my time in IT with Macros in Excel LOL
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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Hi @Frank Sauer ,
By "training" you mean counting macros from training in a gym? 🙃
Second, while I never worked in IT (likely obviously…), Excel is where my mind went too. I truly don't remember who told me about the macro to create a PB, or the details, but my recollection is that it involved something with Mac Numbers, which was an issue since my document is in TextEdit. I also remember it taking a few hours, which is obviously not workable if I am uploading a few times a week. On a side note, for Logos to be a Bible software company, they really are lacking in the User Bible arena. It is sort of ridiculous that it requires html and macros to make a text even functional.
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Yes, training in the gym
Logos 10 - OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Windows 11, Android 16 & Android 14
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@Kristin you may want to look into the method this user did:
Berean Study Bible Personal Book — Logos Community
I tried to use MultiBibleConverter myself one time, but I never could get it installed.
Here's the link to MBC:Releases · schierlm/BibleMultiConverter
I'm sure by typing in the prompts in ChatGPT to help you install it, you can probably get it done. ChatGPT (or other AIs) are great for that.
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Kristin … exactly … applying the macro to a copy, loading a PB and dumping the copy. To repeat later, use the same file name for the copied/macro'd text each time (for the PB).
Actually a key is how you formatted your Bible refs to make the macro's job easier. I parse a lot of texts, and inconsistency is maddening.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Hi @Frank Hodges and @DMB,
Thank you both for the links and clarification. I appreciate it, and I can see now I am running into the same issue that I did last time someone tried to tell me to use a macro. This whole process is sort of acceptable (sort of) if the text in question is basically finished, but it is truly not workable for a document which is frequently being updated.
Like @DMB said, "applying the macro to a copy, loading a PB and dumping the copy. To repeat later, use the same file name for the copied/macro'd text each time (for the PB)" functionally I would now need to edit TWO documents. Every single time I make ANY change in my actual text, I would need to repeat the changes in the macroed version. …. So…. if I spend 8 hours a day working on my text, then I need to repeat that on the macro? So… 16 hours now? This is truly not workable.
If I had a finished copy and I was just making minor edits, fine. But this is truly a work in progress, so the macro idea won't work.
Given all this, does anyone have another idea how I can do this? I know the PB won't work, since the unformatted PB is not even searchable without the html. So does anyone have any idea how to do this?The one thought I have, is maybe turning my TextEdit into a PDF (which took 10 seconds). No html and it is searchable. So then maybe have my Greek or Hebrew or whatever in Logos, and then the PDF separate (as a separate workspace, hint hint).
It isn't ideal since it obviously doesn't scroll with the text (like the Accordance User Bible), but I think this might be my best option.
My plan had been to finish exporting my notes in Accordance and then spend an entire week using ONLY Logos to get used to it, but frankly, that is obviously not possible given that I need Accordance's User Bible.
On a side note, I am actually sort of surprised how convoluted Logos makes it for translators.
Thanks for the ideas everyone, and if anyone has a better idea than my PDF, please let me know.
Kristin0 -
Are you wanting to use this resource in Logos only? Or do you have to access it in other places as well?
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Hi @Frank Hodges ,
I am needing to use it in several other places as well, and for those purposes it needs to be a plain text document without html. If I was only needing it for Logos, I would just format it and leave it that way, but I need to continue updating the clean copy.
The version I use for class is the most recent, so in Accordance I take my clean copy and upload it before each class. It is hard to express how simple it is in Accordance. It is just a clean file, then in Accordance I click to upload user data —> Bible —> say which verse mapping I am using (KJV, ESV, etc) and give it a name and click upload. No html or macros required. Then a few days later I do the same thing, and Accordance asks me if I want to replace the file (since it is already in Accordance), and I tell it to replace it. Super simple and it preserves my plain text.0 -
It is hard to express how simple it is in Accordance. It is just a clean file,
Trust me, I know what you mean. It's an area which Logos struggles to compete. Logos has stopped developing the PB tool, and I can understand their reasoning, but it's a bummer because it's a tool that can be used for a variety of reasons. I'd love to see a simple "import" type tool in Logos, but for obvious reasons we'll probably never see it.1 -
@Kristin what you are wanting to do is easily accomplished. But you need to think about it differently.
First of all, your source file can remain exactly as it is. No, Logos cannot input it directly as you are used to doing in acc. But that is not a problem.
After you edit your source file, the next step is to use an automated process that takes your source file as input and then modifies it by adding the necessary formatting and outputting to a temporary intermediate file. The newly created output file contains the Bible text from your source file along with all of the necessary HTML formatting that the Logos PBB requires.
This file does not overwrite your original source file, and it is temporary in nature. It is used as input into the PBB process. once the PBB is finished the file can be deleted. Your original source file remains unmodified.
There are numerous different ways to perform the conversion. It can be done in any decent text editor using search and replace in combination with regular expressions.
I have been doing these types of things for many years using a windows program called ultra-edit. But there are many text editors out there that can do the same thing. These things can also be done with command line utilities that allow you to manipulate text files using regular expressions.All of this sounds difficult, but there are a lot of people willing to help here on the forum. If no one else that is able volunteers, I would be willing to personally help you with this.
You’ve already mentioned that your source file is in textedit format on macOS. I don’t have a lot of experience with this editor, but a quick Google search reveals that it has the power of regular expressions built into it already … although Apple may have used a non-standard language to access this capability in order to make it more user-friendly. I do not know the details, but I would be willing to look into this and find out if the editor is capable of automating this process for you. If the macOS TextEdit program turns out to not be capable, there are many other options, one of which would be Microsoft Word. Another would be good old command line utilities and/or scripting.
I do not have tons of free time, but I also do not anticipate that this project would take very much time. Once the regular expression strings were created, you could use them to update the personal book anytime you needed.
Yes, this process is going to be different than accordance. But this is not really a flaw in Logos. The PBB import capability in Logos does a lot more than accordance and therefore it is more complicated.
Are you willing to learn a new workflow if someone can help automate the process for you?
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Hi @John,
Thank you for your response. My primary concern is needing to babysit more than one file, but based on what you wrote, it sounds like that might not be a problem. It sounds realistic especially if this is something I could do in TextEdit.
As far as being willing to learn a new workflow, ya, I am for sure open to that. I can't guarantee that I will find it practical to do, but I don't think I will really know if it will be practical or not unless I try. So if you and others are up to it, I would appreciate clarification how to do this, and it seems that the first place to start is to see if TextEdit is capable of what you are talking about and go from there.
On a side note, you raise a good point about Logos' PB being more powerful, as I agree that is true. I don't personally use footnotes, but I know that is something people have really wanted with the User Bible.0 -
Ok sounds like a good plan. I will start a crash course in TextEdit. Meanwhile if anyone else has input on this it would be nice too.
Step 2 will be defining the file format for the source. In Bibleworks it was one verse per line, with book, chapter and verse beginning each line. I assume your file is similar to that?
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Try creating this script as a file and putting it in the same directory as your Bible. This assumes your original is named Bible.txt and you want one named Logos.txt
sed -E 's/^([1-3]?[ ]?[A-Za-z]{1,5}\.? [0-9]+(:[0-9]+)?)(.*)$/[[\@Bible:\1]]{{field-on:Bible}}\3{{field-off:Bible}}/' bible.txt > Logos.txt
Make a copy because I haven't been able to test it but I think it should work. I'm not sure who told you it would take hours but it should certainly be faster than opening Logos.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Thanks Justin. Will definitely take a look at that. I didn't mean hours to run the conversion … but to write the code. But maybe you already did that for us 😀
A script may end up being the best way to do it. But as I know very little about textedit, i want to look at what it can do first. I am learning something new on the mac, which is something I have as a goal …
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Great. And every line in the file is a verse? No chapter headings, outlines, notes? Simple makes it much easier. But for this to work, we need a source file that is consistent in a defined format …
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Hi @Justin Gatlin,
I have a class starting soon, but I would like to ask a few things and clarify a few things. When you wrote, "Try creating this script as a file and putting it in the same directory as your Bible. This assumes your original is named Bible.txt and you want one named Logos.txt"
sed -E 's/^([1-3]?[ ]?[A-Za-z]{1,5}\.? [0-9]+(:[0-9]+)?)(.*)$/[[\@Bible:\1]]{{field-on:Bible}}\3{{field-off:Bible}}/' bible.txt > Logos.txt.
Tbh, I don't know what we are talking about already. By "directory" do you mean the folder? I am concerned since what you are talking about sounds like terminal or something, and not something within TextEdit itself or my viewable folders.
Your comment, "Make a copy because I haven't been able to test it but I think it should work."
I am for sure making a copy to play with. :) I think "Bible" is the name of the file? In case it helps to know, I actually have two files, one named STUDENTOT and the other is STUDENTNT . I think I replace these words with the word "Bible" in your string of code?
Your comment, "I'm not sure who told you it would take hours but it should certainly be faster than opening Logos."
I don't remember who it was either, but it was a long time ago. I don't think I had even downloaded Logos yet, I had just been asking about user bibles. Whoever I spoke with gave me the impression that it would take hours to run, but it is possible I misunderstood them and they had meant writing the code. I truly don't remember the details.
Hi @John,
When you wrote, "Great. And every line in the file is a verse? No chapter headings, outlines, notes? Simple makes it much easier. But for this to work, we need a source file that is consistent in a defined format …"
Right, every line in the file is a verse, no chapter headings, no outlines, no notes, nothing. That is why I wish Logos would also allow a simple upload. And to be honest, I noticed above when I wrote Gen. 1:1 I literally just wrote that (just like my TextEdit) and this forum auto-converted my Gen. 1 just like Accordance does, without me needing to do anything spooky with codes. So seems odd to me that it works on the forum but not the actual program.Take care.
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Hi @Kristin
Another potential way of thinking about this.
If you have a document with the lines below:
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
Gen 1:2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
and build that as a Personal Book with type monograph not Bible, it will compile without any problems.
The verse references will automatically link to the biblical text
You just won't get all of the additional functionality that creating it as a Bible would bring.
Does that help you at all?
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Good idea! I assume the main missing 'Bible' feature would be the book/chap/verse indexing for linking, etc
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Kristin and
May you ask me or @Michael Schierl as he is the creator of the BMC.
Another solution would be to use the for Win or the which works on Mac too. He is also very friendly.
And the script from Justin, which also works from the Terminal.
With the solution from Graham,
you have several ways.
This list has the complexity from top to down.
Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς δόξης·
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I have created my very first Personal Book in Logos!
It was mostly sucessful, but a couple of issues. I will document what I have done so far and maybe others can help too.
Thanks to @Justin Gatlin for his Regular Expression code, I was able to get the conversion itself working fairly quickly. I did make a few changes, and may need to make more ...
To avoid copyright/legal issues, I went with KJV text. To keep it reasonably fast, I only converted the book of Genesis.
(Kristen do not be intimidated ... once the workflow is working, it can then be automated).
For now I am not using a script, I am doing it in Ultra-edit, which makes the testing and debugging of the code much easier.
The file shown is the text as it would be formatted in the source file ... with the REGEX applied to only the first verse. The REGEX code is highlighted in yellow. In Ultra-edit (mine is a really old version btw) it executes like a search and replace. Probably the same or similar in other comparable (higher level) text editors. I looked at information on Apple's Textedit and it is not very clear whether it would be able to perform this task or not. It does look like it has a lot of capability, but it does not look good as a replacement for Ultraedit. The only included MacOS program that is documented to support REGEX would be the numbers spreadsheet. And numbers cannot export directly to .DOCX, so I am also ruling that out. Pages would be the free option to convert the imtermediate file to .DOCX format on MacOS. I do not know if other free programs such as Libreoffice could do REGEX and save to .DOCX format. But I'm pretty sure those will run on MacOS.
I had difficulty finding documentation for the personal book builder, so I used an example that @Dave Hooton had posted in Kristen's first thread. I'm sure I saw a wiki page on it before, but could not find it.
Once in Logos, the milestones / verse references worked. The Bible scrolled along with other Bibles. Text compare with the KJV worked and showed no errors. At least none I could find without scrolling through the entire book looking for them. Why does the Text Compare not have a "Find next Difference" button or a "only show verses with differences" option? Either I am missing something, or Logos didn't put enough thought into this feature.
A couple of minor problems once imported into Logos. I took a straight text file into Microsoft Word, and then exported it to a .DOCX file. In the process, the default font ended up being "Courier New", which generated the only error message. Strange, but after generating the error message, it ended up displaying in "Courier New" in Logos anyway. What font is Logos supposed to take? I can find no documentation or examples.
To automate this, we do not want to have to select text and change fonts in a word processor. On the Mac the obvious choice will be Pages. Not sure if the same thing will happen there. I'm hoping this font selection can be automated.
Question for @Kristin: In Textedit, are you working with plain-text, or RTF? It supports both. If it is straight-text then all the text is displayed in the same font.
The other problem, not a huge one, is that Logos Bibles have a verse number on each verse. But on the first verse of every chapter it displays the chapter and the verse. I am not sure if it would even be possible to do this with REGEX script. Can REGEX do conditional output?
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I tried the method suggested by @Graham Criddle, using the Bible text format, and compiling as a monograph.
It compiled successfully … except for the same font error that compiling as a Bible had generated.
It displayed chapter and verse numbers, but did not link and scroll with other Bibles (no index I assume).
It was unable to load into the Text compare tool at all, as that tool only works on Bibles. Safe to assume that no other tools that work on Bibles would be able to work with this Bible/Monograph hybrid?
But … Graham was right … it did compile and loaded into Logos without any HTML-like conversion.
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That's correct. As a monograph, it thinks that all of the references are references you want to look up, not an index. To make it an index, it needs to have the [Bible:] tag. BibleText is not really necessary to get what I think Kristin wants, but it is easy enough to include it in the RegEx and so you might as well do it right.
Here is some documentation:
Font errors are not really a big deal, Logos just subs in another one.
Using Logos as a pastor, seminary professor, and Tyndale author
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Hey @Justin Gatlin, I am thinking you have worked with this a bit. Did you assign a font to the text in the .DOCX file?
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Hi @Graham Criddle,
When you mentioned, "If you have a document with the lines below:
Gen 1:1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earthGen 1:2Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.and build that as a Personal Book with type
monographnot Bible, it will compile without any problems."Yes, you are correct about how my verses are formatted. I appreciate the idea, as the PB are complicated. However, if I am understanding @John and @Justin Gatlin correctly, this text would not scroll in parallel with a normal bible. In Accordance, for example, I have an ESV, NIV, Greek/Hebrew/ and my User Bible and they all scroll together. If I am understanding correctly, Logos requires the PB to have this functionality. I think. I appreciate the idea though.
@John, Regarding your question, "Question for @Kristin: In Textedit, are you working with plain-text, or RTF? It supports both. If it is straight-text then all the text is displayed in the same font."
It's just a txt format.
Hi @Fabian, thanks for letting me know I can ask you, as there is no way I could have ever done an Accordance user bible if it hadn't been for your help. I am still so grateful for your help with that! If I am understanding what you wrote here, if I am trying to have a scrollable Bible in Logos, it simply needs to be in HTML, which would be two copies. Is this correct? This whole post was about alternatives to the PB without html, but it it appears that there really aren't any. I appreciated @Graham Criddle's monograph idea, as that seemed to be just uploading it (like a user bible), yet it apparently wouldn't function like a user bible.Earlier on this thread it sounded like maybe I could just select something from dropdown in TextEdit and run some search, but after seeing a string of code, it clearly looks like something which would need to occur outside of TextEdit. If that is correct, what program would it be?
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Yes, you are correct about how my verses are formatted. I appreciate the idea, as the PB are complicated. However, if I am understanding correctly, this text would not scroll in parallel with a normal bible. In Accordance, for example, I have an ESV, NIV, Greek/Hebrew/ and my User Bible and they all scroll together. If I am understanding correctly, Logos requires the PB to have this functionality. I think. I appreciate the idea though.
Yes, that is correct.
if I am trying to have a scrollable Bible in Logos, it simply needs to be in HTML
It needs to be in .docx format and have coding for Bible milestones.
From the wiki page describing this:
Bible
- Has Bible milestones for each verse e.g. [[@Bible:Jn 1:10]]
- Use the Bible field to separate bible text from verse numbers and headings, etc., but punctuation can be included.
And the synxtax for fields is:
Fields
The syntax for Fields is {{field-on:<fieldname>}} ... {{field-off:<fieldname>}} OR use a Word style field:<fieldname>. For example:
- {{field-on:Bible}}”For God so loved the world, {{field-off:Bible}}
- {{bible-on}}”For God so loved the world, {{bible-off}}
At a minimum you need the Bible milestone at the beginning of each verse - so something like [[@Bible:Jn 1:10]]
And the script Justin is suggesting is simply running a command in a text editor to automate adding these strings to the beginning of each line in your existing file.
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And the script Justin is suggesting is simply running a command in a text editor to automate adding these strings to the beginning of each line in your existing file.
Have you tested it? By me it does not on every line, only on the first and the last.
Χριστὸς ἐν ὑμῖν, ἡ ἐλπὶς τῆς δόξης·
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