I'm a missionary in Japan. The name of my mission agency is WEC International. That's supposedly Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ, but I think I have a better idea about what it stands for...
2007-02-27
Studying with Accordance, Part 1
As I mentioned earlier, my survey of computer Bible software turned up Accordance as the least bad option. Well, I want to revise that opinion. It's actually really good!
I picked up the Library 7 Standard package, which has a great range of modules with it. It's admittedly mainly older stuff, but there's a variety: neat things like the Bible Art dictionary which I wouldn't have considered, but will probably come in useful.
The first thing I should mention is the customer support. The staff have been really helpful at answering my questions pre- and post-sales, and they also hang around on the (very active) forums answering my banal enquiries. They also offer generous missionary discounts!
But the really nice thing is how flexible it's turned out to be. I've been approaching the software in the way I approach any software: "Well, if I wrote it, it would do this as well!" Except I've found that either it already does this, or it'll do this soon. I haven't been able to find anything (yet) that I've wanted to do but couldn't, which is possibly the nicest thing I could say about any piece of software.
For instance this morning I wanted to search for all the Greek words that have been translated as "word" in English, and their frequency distribution. Well, you just do a search for "word" in any English text which has been tagged up, click on "Details", and there you go:
Want to know how that breaks down for each book of the NT? No problem, just click another button in the details box:
Look at that, John never uses rhema.
Nice, isn't it? More Accordance tips as I discover them!
lathos: Going from iPod 1.x to 2.x and severely regretting it.
