Highlighting, and Underlining?

[shane2peru]

Bro. Tim,

I love Bible Analyzer, and use it often. There is a feature that I do miss from a different Bible application. That is the simple ability to underline, or even highlight a text in the Bible window, and have it stay there permanently. This is something I do in my regular Bible as well, it really helps me spot things, and make phrases, or words stand out when I highlight something. I don't think this would be a real difficult thing to add. It is something that would be of great use though. Just wanted to mention it, because I don't think it has ever been brought up before.

On a side note, in the latest Mac version, and previous versions. When I click in the Reference window at the top to type in a Reference to be looked up, it leaves the text that was in there, and doesn't 'auto-delete' or replace the text. I'm not sure if that is by design, or accident. But I wanted to just mention that too. The 4.9.1.10 version seems to run smoother though! Thanks!

[Tim]

We would have added highlighting capability in the version 4 series, but the underlying page display would not allow it. However, when 5.0 comes along we will be using an updated page display that will allow it.

We also have in mind developing some pre-made highlighting indexes that can be switched on and off. Such as Bible promises, prophecy, OT/NT quotes, etc.

As you noted the Suggestion Box control in Mac does not delete the entry. That is a peculiarity on OS X. We may be able to develop a workaround to do it.

[shane2peru]

Wow!!! That sounds excellent! I would be happy with my own personal highlighting, but having Promises and other things able to be highlighted, that is awesome! Can't wait for version 5 to come out!

[nymusicman]

When you integrate personal highlighting will you be doing it in such a way that:

1. Highlighting one version of a Bible will work across all versions?
and
2. Highlighting information is stored in a separate file/database so that it can be synced (by me or you, doesn't matter)?

Something I would love to see in BibleAnalyzer is my preferences/information/personal touches be able to be synced (by me or you, doesn't matter) so that it doesn't matter if I'm on my laptop/desktop, linux/windows whatever machine and see all my stuff there.

I don't mind implementing my own dropbox/owncloud solution. But that means future development needs the settings/notes/highlights/whatever future user feature there is, in files that I can sync independent of BibleAnalyzer or Operating System.

I'm not sure but I think the settings already are this way, I know notes are this way, but I just was curious if your infrastructure for highlights was to be setup this way as well.

Thanks and God Bless!

[Tim]

It is not possible to highlight across Bible versions on a word level with an reliability. The obvious reason is versions have a different number of words, changed word order, and similar differences. On a verse level it would work in most cases except where versification is different or a verse is missing. However, I'm not going to implement cross version highlighting at this time. All highlight indexes will be for a specific version.

Any highlighting a user does will be saved in an index file and can be transported to any other Bible Analyzer installation. I'll look into making an easy way a user can move these files to another installation. I may eventually offer a "cloud sync" for these files, but its not in the works as yet.

I have the basic highlighting code working. There are currently about 6 colors plus bold underline. The colors can be nested on top of each other. The indexing is on a word level, not character. That is, if only a partial word is selected, the whole word will be indexed for highlighting. That way users don't have to be precise with their selection. No more than one verse can be highlighted at a time and HL will be removed from a whole verse or chapter at a time. Below is a screenshot,

highlight beta.png (94.39 KiB) Viewed 635 times

I'm also working on some premade HL indexes such as the,

Questions of Jesus
Promises in the Bible
etc.

These will be selectable and can be toggled on and off. I don't have that code written yet but will when I get time.

Note:
Because of the passing of my father into glory a couple weeks ago, I have many personal things to attend to over the next coming weeks, but Lord willing I will be able to return to more Bible Analyzer development soon. I thank everyone for their concern and prayers.