After great searchings of heart (bonus points if you can identify the allusion), I decided to dismiss my classes for Friday, October 9, 2009 so that I could attend an Accordance training seminar. Aside from the classroom withdrawal symptoms, I’m finding the seminar quite useful. I won’t attempt to give you a seminar-by-proxy here, of course, but I find some of the new information so exciting that I just have to share it with you. Besides that, Karyn asked me to. On Twitter. Yes, Jim, Twitter.

Session 1 ran from about 9:20–10:35. I already knew many of the procedures that Mark Allison demonstrated during this session, but I did learn a few new and exciting things.

Switching between word search and verse search. I didn’t know that you could type ⌘-; to switch between word search and verse search modes. I find this quite convenient. Indeed, there are probably many keyboard shortcuts that I haven’t learned yet. The current keyboard shortcuts guide pertains to Accordance 7, though most of the shortcuts have the same effect in Accordance 8.

Closing all tabs but one. Sometimes I end up with half a dozen tabs open in Accordance, and I want to de-clutter my workspace. I learned today that if you hold down the Option key and click on a tab’s close button, Accordance will close all the other tabs but that one. The operation is somewhat non-intuitive, but extremely useful.

Grouping and ordering tools. Despite using Accordance for more than a dozen years, I’ve never quite mastered the Resource Palette. Back when all I owned were a Hebrew Bible module and one or two English Bible modules, I didn’t really need it. As my library grew, I still didn’t pay much attention to the Resource Palette, but I’ve scratched my head more than once over the organization of tools. Why, I’ve wondered, is the Jouon-Muraoka Hebrew syntax book considered a “general” tool rather than a “Hebrew” tool? Why is the BHS Apparatus a “reference” tool? Mark cleared it all up today: Accordance groups the tools based on each tool’s internal organizational structure. “English” tools are organized alphabetically in English. “Hebrew” or “Greek” tools are organized alphabetically in Hebrew or Greek. “Reference” tools are organized by chapter and verse references. “General” tools are none of the above. Now that I know that the grouping derives from the tool’s internal outline, rather than its topic, it all makes sense. During the slower parts of the seminar, or during discussions of procedures I already use frequently, I’ve also been fiddling with the Library Window. You can’t change tool groupings in the Library Window (except my creating “favorites”), but you can reorder tools within groups, create folders, and so on. My Accordance library is now much better organized than it was at 8:00 this morning.

Neat Cool Sick Instant Details window tricks. Accordance 8.3.3, just released a few days ago, adds a couple of great new features. If you point to a word in a tagged text and then press the Shift key, the content of the Instant Details window will “freeze” and a new icon on the Instant Details window will light up. Clicking on that icon copies that data to the system clipboard. If you point to a word in a tagged text and then press the ⌘ key, the Instant Details box will display the full entry from the topmost relevant tool. See this crude video to see these capabilities in action.