Concordance Program Review Copyright 1990 by Scott Dowdle Permission is granted to reprint this article as long as its contents aren't modified other than to change the length, fix grammatical or spelling errors, or to remove references to the illustrations. These stipulations are made to make it easy for Atari related newsletter editors to use this article and make it fit into their publications. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- SpiritWare's Concordance Program Review by Scott Dowdle June 1990 Have you been looking for a Bible Study tool for your ST? If so, I've got some good news for you -- the Fifteenth Avenue Bible Church (FABC) has created a fantastic, fast, GEM based Bible search program with database features. That's right, you have full access to the entire Bible, available in either King James Version or New International Version translations. What can Concordance do for you? Read on... General Description Because of the nature and size of a Bible Search program the package comes on several double sided disks. The files on the disks include CONCORD.PRG - the executable Concordance Program, CLIP.PRG - an Optional AUTO Folder Clipboard, and the various Compressed Bible Text Data files with the extensions of .CCD and .DCT. For example, KJV_NT.CCD and KJV_NT.DCT contain the entire King James Version New Testament. Since each version of the Bible requires 2.5 Megabytes of disk space those with only a floppy drive may access Scripture in segments of Genesis to Deuteronomy, Joshua to Esther, Job to Song of Solomon, Isaiah to Malachi, and Matthew to Revelation. That's right, the entire New Testament will fit on a single Double Sided floppy disk. Hard Drive owners may access the entire Bible as long as they are willing to commit the required 2.5 Megabytes to store the Program and all of the Compressed Bible Text Data files. The Concordance Manual Included with the disks is a 5.5" x 8.25", 58 page User Manual that is professionally printed and very attractive. It includes a Table of Contents, an Introduction, Program Installation Instructions, Tutorials, Complete Feature Explanations, an Overview of all of the drop down menu selections, an Appendix, and an Index. Complementing the written instructions are plenty of screen shots and illustrations. The manual appears to have been done with some Desktop Publishing software on a laser printer and reminds me of the manuals that CodeHead Software supplies with their products. Although the Concordance Program is easy to use and doesn't require a lot of verbose explanations the Concordance Manual does and excellent job of providing a maximum amount of information in an understandable tone without over simplifying things. As far as manuals go this one ranks very high by any measuring system. Program Display and Usage The Concordance display is divided into three windows: Search Command, List, and Text. The top line of the display has the usual GEM drop down menus including access to any loaded Desk Accessories under the Desk drop down menu. You can see the main display of Concordance along with the contents of the various drop down menus (excluding Desk) in Figure 1. Simply put, the three basic program operations are 1) Read the Bible, 2) Search the Bible Text, and 3) Save and/or Print Search Results. The speed and power of this program comes through well not only in the Reading features but especially in the flexibility of the Search Options. Reading the Bible As mentioned earlier, there are three display windows. Any of them may be moved and resized if desired but the default window layout seems to be the most functional. The Text window is used to display the actual Bible Text. Depending on which portion(s) of the Bible you decide to work with the Text window will initially fill with the appropriate first few verses of the first book's first chapter. Sound confusing? Well, it really isn't since the Text window contains an information line telling which book and chapter are currently being displayed. Preceding every verse is (drumrole) the verse number. The Scroll bar can be used as one would expect - to scroll or page through the verses, chapters, and books. There are several ways to jump anywhere you want to in the Bible text. These include clicking on various parts of the scroll bar in conjunction with the Alternate Key or by using the selections found under the Locate drop down menu. The Find Verse and Display Book selections bring up separate dialog boxes for user input which is acted upon immediately. Jumping to any book, chapter and verse with Concordance is quicker than any human hand could ever do with repetition. Just how fast is Concordance? It usually takes less than a single second to jump anywhere. Searching through the Bible The Search options and speed of Concordance is really what makes it shine. One can search for a character string, a single word, or a phrase, as well use special database like operators for complex searches. Here's how it works... First decide what to search through --- A single book OR a group of books OR the entire Bible? It's very easy to choose by clicking on Limit Search under the Search drop down menu which presents a very detailed Book Selector dialog box (see figure 2). Either click on the book abbreviation to select/deselect books one at a time or use the grouping buttons to select common book ranges. Now that Concordance knows what you want to search through all one needs to enter is what to search for. Simple searches are those done with a keyword or phrase such as "love" or "for God so loved". More complex searches can use the wildcard or plus sign (+). For example, if one wanted to look for all of the occurances of the various derivations of the word love one might use "lov+" which will search for all words that begin with "lov". Even more complex searches can be done with the OR and AND Operators (/ and ,). For example, typing in "Heavenly Father/Spirit" would search for all verses that contain either "Heavenly Father" or "Heavenly Spirit". Typing in "Father,Son" would search for all verses that contain both "Father" and "Son" in the same verse. The examples given might lead one to ask about how Concordance uses punctuation and if it is character case sensitive? Punctuation shouldn't be used within search strings and Concordance isn't character case sensitive. Just how fast is Concordance? The search speed all depends on how much of the bible text you are searching is loaded into the computers memory. With a 512K machine, only part of a segment can be loaded into RAM and Concordance will goto the disk when it needs to. With a 1MB machine it is possible to load full segments into memory. With 1MB for example, the entire King James Version New Testament will fit into memory at once making searches extremely quick. The following are a few examples of search strings, their results and how long they took. I did them with a digital pocket watch so they aren't exactly accurate to the millisecond but close enough. Searching through the whole KJV NT in RAM - love - 156 verses found in 04 seconds. lov+ - 202 verses found in 45 seconds. Heavenly Father - 006 verses found in 04 seconds. Father/Son - 599 verses found in 17 seconds. Father,Son - 047 verses found in 13 seconds. lov+,Father/Son - 032 verses found in 64 seconds. From the results you can see that Concordance is fast. When a search is completed the the List (of Verses) window info line tells how many matches were found and the window fills up with the list of verses. The Text window also jumps to the first found book, chapter and verse listed in the List window. Within the Text window the search criteria is in bold. To read through the verses simply click on the desired verse in the List window and the Text window will jump right to the selected verse. This operation is sort of hard to explain for those who have never seen Concordance in action but believe me, it is smooth and easy to follow because the user interface is excellent. Saving or Printing Results of Searches What good is a Bible study program that will only let you view things on the screen? Not very good in my book. Concordance has options to Save (as an ASCII text file) or Print the results of your searches. You may Save/Print a single verse text, the list of verses, all verse's text, or selected verses. The Save to disk is very important because it allows you to save as a text file almost anything desired which can be later edited and imported into your favorite Word Processor or Desktop Publishing program. Closing Comments SpiritWare's Concordance Program is shareware and the King James Version of the Bible is public domain. The New International Version is copyritten and requires SpiritWare to pay a small royalty fee to Zondervan Bible Publishers. The registration fees (or cost covering donations) are as follows: Concordance Program with KJV New Testament only - $15 with entire KJV Bible - $30 Concordance Program with NIV New Testament only - $20 with entire NIV Bible - $40 Concordance Program with both KJV & NIV Bibles - $60 Order what you want because it is certainly worth it! A super fantastic program at a super fantastic price!! Go for it!!! To make an order or for more information please write to: Fifteenth Avenue Bible Church 15211 15th Avenue NE Seattle, Washington 98155 Since the Concordance program is shareware it can be posted on BBSes and is even available for download on GEnie. Usually though, only a limited portion of the Bible is included with it mainly because of the filesize. Feel free to check it out as shareware but remember if you don't register (donate) you don't receive a manual or original disks. The manual really goes through some of the seemingly hidden features of the program that a non-registered user would miss... And HEY, the disk labels on the original disks are neat so check it out!